It's hard to believe September is almost over - and I celebrated my 33rd birthday two weeks ago! Even though that momentous occasion has passed, I thought it would be worth sharing what a memorable birthday it was.
For those of you who watched the news on September 8 & 9, you may recall hearing about a "historic" power outage that affected three states: California, Arizona and New Mexico. The power went out on my birthday while I was at work, around 3:45 p.m. By 4:00 we were already hearing reports (thanks to people checking social media and news sites with their smart phones) that the power outage was widespread and probably wouldn't be restored for a couple of hours. So everyone in San Diego hit the freeway at the same time, which caused MAJOR gridlock on every road in the county as there were no traffic lights!
We literally couldn't even get our cars out of the office parking lot, traffic was so backed up, so several co-workers and I hung out in the darkness and made plans for how to provide communications coverage at our hospitals (which were operating on back-up generators) should the power not return overnight or the next day. Luckily my mom was in town and was babysitting Isabelle for me, so I didn't need to worry about trying to maneuver my way to daycare in such horrendous traffic.
By around 6:30 traffic had started to move, and I was put on-call for an assignment in one of our hospital's command centers, either for an overnight shift or for coverage starting at 8 a.m. the next day depending on what the needs were. I was able to make it home by about 7:30--with just enough daylight left to dig out lots and lots of candles and some back-up flashlights.
Isabelle seemed to think September 8 was the single greatest day of her life thus far - what two-year-old wouldn't be excited to run around in the dark with a flashlight, surrounded by flickering candles? It was an adventure!
As for my birthday celebration, we had a nice candelit dinner (our food had cooked just long enough in the crockpot by the time the power went out that we knew it would be safe to eat), followed by birthday cupcakes that Jason's mom had picked up earlier in the day.
Fortunately power was restored around 2:00 a.m., which was great for a couple of reasons - my mom's Friday flight was able to leave San Diego after all, and we didn't have to worry about daycare being closed, which could have been an issue considering I had to report to work regardless of the power.
At any rate, definitely a birthday to remember!
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