It's a hidden blessing. Go see it in IMAX.

Ah, those crazy North Seattle Scandinavians. Always on the cutting edge of the trends--in this case, the exciting new No Carbon Future. What next? Urban gardening, Ya Sure Ya Betcha style?

Re: food: As long as it's back on sometime tonight, you shouldn't lose anything.

go out and buy a generator, you wussy.

Generally most food can last for 24 hours or more if you don't open the fridge and release the cold. Frozen foods can last a bit longer I believe.

You'll be fine. Your power will definitely be back on tonight. There's no wind storm or anything.

i don't know but i'd ask science...

Cry me a river... During that wind storm two years ago, my house in Kenmore lost power for OVER A WEEK, in the dead of winter... it was nice to have power restored on Christmas Eve. Good times.

Really makes you appreciate how dependent we are on electricity.

Just drink wine. Or Gin.

Jonah, if your roof supports a helicopter I can come rescue you.

Dan Savage advocates for the Iraq War in The Stranger--Oct. 2002

"War may be bad for children and other living things, but there are times when peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is one of those times."

"In the meantime, invading and rebuilding Iraq will not only free the Iraqi people, it will also make the Saudis aware of the consequences they face if they continue to oppress their own people while exporting terrorism and terrorists. The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves."

@10, obviously your insanity runs on a generator.

Stop opening the fridge and it'll keep for at least a day, if not days. If you really are concerned it'll be days, move some of your frozen food into the fridge, and then shut it for the duration. Or buy some ice on the electrified capitol hill.
- Science

@10. Almost anything else you could do with yourself--learning Arabic, supporting anti-war candidates, reading history, picking your nose until you feel cortex, anything--would do more to hasten the end of the war than reposting that same tired shit over and over again.

"...Go see that shit, America"?

Jonah Spank-my-butt: are you 12 years old?

City Light power outage hotline:

"Just looking for information? Call our Power Outage Hotline at 206.684.7400. If your area isn't mentioned, please stay on the line to report it."

Took me 4 freaking minutes to find that information. Now, on to D-Listed.

1. If you have frozen stuff, cook it.
2. Cook meats to well done, and salt to taste... jerky never hurt anyone. Air dry...
3. Try the east coast a few year ago... try power out for weeks... the august evening started well. the wood fired pizza store had a landslide business... the ice cream stores were giving out ice cream, and he town was a party... UNTIL

Pumps that kept the sewer system empty, below he level of municipal canals quit... and you guessed it, undergound garages filled with canal water and s***. No automatic tellers... no cash on hand, therefore no purchases... No gas stations... what a rodeo. I left town, and bought gas from a farmer at $20 per gallon who had an overhead bulk tank. Drove 350 miles before I found a town with its own municpal power plant it had isolated from the grid...good old 19th century power dam with an 1896 power plant that could still produce KW's. Whew. Eascaped to the midwest.

If you're stuck, relax... go to bed and have a spot of play with your partner... What else is there to do?

If your power went out why would you sit home and worry about it, why not go *out* and do something fun somewhere where there *is* power?

And how are you posting, anyway? Gerbil-powered internet?

Per metrokc.gov:

"A fully loaded refrigerator may keep food fresh for about six hours.
A fully loaded freezer may keep food frozen for up to two days.
If any food in the refrigerator or freezer is warmer than 41 °F, throw it out."

Fridge stuff will often be fine beyond six hours. Smell it, taste it, etc. though.

"If your power went out why would you sit home and worry about it, why not go *out* and do something fun somewhere where there *is* power?"

Are you implying that one needs power to have fun.

A little info on the north seattle outages at the PI:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/371464_outage20.html

Yeah, how the fuck are you powering your internet, fucker?

Jonathan,

On Update 3 - what time did you get power back? I saw the blackout when I was coming back from a rehearsal in Bothell at about 3:20 PM (which was at the traffic lights on the southbound offramp from I-5 to eastbound Northgate Way), and it was still in effect at 10:30PM or so as I drove south down 15th Ave NE toward the intersection of Lake City Way/80th/15th and there was an odd patchwork of blocks/intersections where the lights were still on and others where they weren't.

I'm reasonably forgiving, but this seems to me to be a pretty lame example of municipal competence and/or customer service.

So when your City Council pleads poverty to explain why they can't deal with this kind of routine maintenance, just remember the $200-400 million they want to spend to reconfigure the street grind in South Lake Union in a way that makes traffic worse.

Then go out and buy a generator.

Aw, the lights were out and the spoiled little boy was scared.

Geezus, relax.

If you have a functional immune system, you can handle the minor increase in bacterial growth that might have occurred over 12ish hours. You've evolved to recognize spoiled food. If it looks and smells ok, it's probably fine. Seriously.

Weird -- the blackout yesterday sure seemed to move around a lot. I was at the Northgate Target around 2pm when it hit there and the whole shopping center was evacuated. Power was fine about two blocks from there, though. Our house, 135th & 15th NE, lost power around 4 for about 30 minutes. And now it sounds like it moved from us to other North Seattle locations after that.

What happened??

Gee, it sucks to be you.

Mr X:
"So when your City Council pleads poverty to explain why they can't deal with this kind of routine maintenance, just remember the $200-400 million they want to spend to reconfigure the street grind in South Lake Union in a way that makes traffic worse."

Hey that's not counting how they are going to offload the utily relocation cost of that project onto all the utility users! It's only fair that we all pay through using our taxes AND paying higher electric rates. After all it's a good urban renewal project that will enhance property values in SLU.

And, increasing eastbound travel times on Mercer by 15 minutes or so will force more people out of their cars!!

Well worth it.

What else you going to do with it, build sidewalks all over town?

@23 -- The answer is at 0:26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcI8CTr1O6M&feature=related

BELAY THAT @26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTW19g-uUTw

Apologies.

@27,

That's the most CYA thing I've ever read.

Sorry, I don't give a shit about your electricity situation, but "I'm a huge comic nerd and I never thought of the Joker as scary?" What the hell? THAT thought, I find horrifying.

The Killing Joke? The Man Who Laughs?

I'm not going to even touch on the "the rest of the movie is meh" shit...

Anyway, yes, Ledger is everything the Joker is supposed to be, and yes, see it in IMAX.

You just need to get creative with the non-power related activities. When our power went out for three days in the middle of winter we had a séance, listened to my roommate’s crank radio until my other roommate sat on it and broke it, had flashlight poetry readings, danced around the living room and finally made our own shadow puppet play. You just need to get yourself some roommates.

vault fire.

If you think that was bad, the power outage happened right as I was watching the damn movie at Oak Tree on Aurora, just before the point where they catch the Joker and just before you find out that a character you thought was dead is actually alive.

I went home thinking, "Why the hell would they do that?" but kind of laughing my ass of at the same time because it seemed like such a Joker-ish thing to happen.

And yes, Heath Ledger is legit brilliant. I had maybe one or two "meh" moments throughout, but overall, still a truly great movie.