I Survived Hurricane Sandy

In my 34 years of living in Jersey City, New Jersey we have seen our share of bad storms. From the blizzard of 1992 and 1996 and 2010 to really bad rainstorms but nothing as horrendous and full of disaster as Hurricane Sandy was.

On Monday night around 11pm, my entire neighbourhood lost power. Complete darkness. Complete stillness. I originally blamed Paul Heyman for waiting until the last minute to announce Team Punk therefore my power went out. I have never seen my city, my hometown, in so much turmoil. The stores up the block from me were closed. The school on my corner has a generator so their lights were on as custodians cleaned it up. School for me was cancelled for the entire week meaning I now have to work until the end of June as well as my spring break might be in jeopardy. I am very glad I did not start booking my trip to Montreal, Quebec, Canada for that week now. My city had a curfew of 7pm to 7am as there were no street lights, but I did break the curfew a couple of times by just standing outside my house. My cell phone remained charged throughout the entire time I did not have power as so my computer; well it lasted up to 10 percent as I was using it to charge my phone. I, unfornuately, lost cell phone service Tuesday morning so if you wanted to get in touch with me you could not unless you had my land line phone. My mom had to cook everything in our freezer as it would have gone bad as well as use the gas stove for heat as my heat thermostat runs on electricity. Luckily the pilot lights of the hot water heater did not go out so hot showers were to be had but to stay warm my entire family and Hudson practically camped out in the kitchen for three days. We played card games, ate by candlelight, listened to the radio, read a lot of books, slept until weird hours of the afternoon. We live on a street in Jersey City that is raised so we did not experience any flooding in my house but the winds knocked out the power grid. Or so we think. We are all fine and we managed. By Thursday we were all pretty much sick of not having power but we dealt with it. To be honest, not being connected to the outside world actually felt good. Yes I made sure to get in touch with loved ones to let them know I was okay but to not have the instant gratification of social connection brought me back to high school times. I was tempted to take a shower and shave in complete darkness but was afraid of slipping and cutting myself and not see what I was doing. I saw my local chinese food delivery man deliver food on his bike with a flashlight in his mouth. Whoa.

When my power came back on, after myself saying "If Sam and Dean Winchester were here this would be fixed by now. If Sheldon were here this would be fixed by now." my entire neighbourhood started screaming in joy. It was so surreal and amazing.

But other than that I hope all of my friends are fine.

For ongoing coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy go here: CNN Ongoing Coverage

For amazing and astounding photos of the storm, go here: Hurricane Sandy Photos