power outage!

After slip-sliding my way to work this morning (for those who don't know-- it started snowing yesterday afternoon and, as per usual, shopkeepers and the municipal government did little to salt the human-trafficked surfaces), I got to school about a minute late and began the final exam review session with my 10:10AM students.

About halfway through the class, I noticed that the hall lights had gone out. On a sudden intuition, I walked over to our classroom's light switches (the lights had been off; the morning sunlight was quite bright on that side of the building) and tried turning on our lights. Nada. Eventually, the news filtered to us that a generator or transformer had blown, though it wasn't immediately clear whether this problem applied only to my building or to other buildings on campus. A few hours later, I got the news from other students that other buildings had indeed been affected.

Power has been restored (the restoration happened a little past 5PM), but I've been told that this is just temporary: the real repair work is yet to be completed, so the power will go off again. Needless to say, this outage was a major inconvenience to us all day long; I hadn't printed out and photocopied my review sheets yesterday, and I hadn't printed out extra copies of a final exam that two of my CNN students hadn't taken on Monday, so my solution to all these problems was rather low-tech. It wasn't much of a problem for me to wing it today; I imagine that teachers in far-flung countries would tell me to quit bitching about a temporary outage: "Hell, we're lucky to have running water!"

I'm off to Costco, Hannam, and Lotte Mart this evening. Lots to shop for, lots to cook. Here's hoping the ground isn't too icy tonight, as I'll be shuttling pots and pans over from my dorm to my office. Crap, crap, crap. Francis Ford Crapola.


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