I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at the clock to see what time it was. Except there were no numbers on the digital clock. I realized Joe was out of bed and the sound of him walking around the apartment had woken me up. Wait, that didn't make any sense either... I'm the deepest sleeper in all the land. Why had I woken up so easily? Well, the power was out, which meant the fan was off, which meant I was without my white noise. And a Meg without white noise is a wide awake Meg. Gah!! I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep to no avail. Instead, Joe and I got up for a little bit and talked about how the entire apartment complex was blacked out. We saw a police officer on the street below talking to some people. Everything was dark outside except the headlights from the officer's car and the few emergency lights that had turned on. It was pretty cool looking. Joe and I lit some candles and sat on the couch for a while. Then we realized we didn't know quite what we were doing, since there was nothing we could do about the blackout except go back to sleep. Joe leaned over the table and blew out all three candles in quick succession. Then, standing in the pitch black darkness, he said in a calm and serious voice, "Say, uh, you don't happen to have a light over there, do you?"

I busted up laughing, felt around in the dark for the tiny pen-flashlight, and turned it on. I giggled all the way back to the bedroom. It was like something out of a movie: candles blown out, a pause, followed by Joe's inquisitive question, as if he were asking just out of sheer curiosity and not necessarily so that he could SEE where on earth he was going! That man is too much, I tell you.

I checked my cell phone as I crawled into bed, which read 4:49am. Joe said the power had been out for more than an hour. I was concerned about him getting up for work on time. I was also concerned that the power outage might last for several days, like it did in the city a few months back. Luckily, Joe's cell phone alarm went off on time and woke us up, and by that time, all the electricity was running again.

As if all that wasn't weird enough, I'm almost positive we had an earthquake just a few moments ago. I was just about to nod off on the couch, when it felt like someone shook the whole thing. I looked up, wondering how the cat had managed to shake the whole couch by jumping on it (he's so small, how did he do that??), when I saw him by my foot. Homer looked around, slightly alarmed, and Patches looked a little weirded out as well. All three of us had been either napping or darn close to it when our little home was jolted. It had to have been an earthquake. Very strange. Afterwards, the cats went back to sleep. I got up to write a journal entry. We all cope with these things differently.

What a way to kick off Birthday Week!!! I forget where I first heard the notion of Birthday Week (maybe it was Evany's journal, or Pam's), but I sure like it a whole lot more than just one Birth-DAY. That's not enough time for celebration! Anyway, my birthday is Wednesday and I am super excited about it. I love birthdays, especially my own! I've got some plans in the works for some cool celebratory activities, so we'll see how it all turns out. I'll give a full report next week.

Speaking of weekends, I never wrote about LAST weekend, which was very cool, and is one of the things on my list of Crap I Need to Tell You Already!

So, without further ado, last weekend...