How to stay cool when the lights go out in the city

The Baltimore Sun

The thunderstorm that put the smackdown on crab town Tuesday uprooted trees and tossed them all around my North Baltimore neighborhood, downing wires that kept Wyman Park without power for nearly 24 hours.

Some people - the fancy folks with battery-powered fans - like to think of the experience of having no electricity as a quaint return to simpler times. Little rowhouse on the prairie.

Forget that.

I've been through it enough times (at least once a year since moving to the city nearly five years ago) to have devised a mental endurance routine to being in the dark while paying Baltimore Gas and Electric bills that are putting everyone in the red.

1. Candles are cooler than flashlights. Candles may have the potential to start a fire, but they're also quick to provide a fun burst of fright when you - Ah! - spot a shadowy figure standing outside your kitchen window with a candle under its chin! (Oh, wait, that was my reflection.) Flashlights are better for outside use, for spotlighting potential prowlers who, like cockroaches, prefer the cover of darkness to creep around.

2. When the profiteering ice cream truck parks on the corner chiming its incessant electric bells, don't fight the urge to buy a soft-serve cone for you and your child. And don't let the purchase deter you from executing your plan to rescue (read: devour) the fast-melting 1.75 quarts of Breyers Caramel in the freezer.

3. Spouses love to bandy about obvious advice for surviving a power outage. There's comfort in verbally checking off the easy stuff. But if the heat has worn your tolerance thin, just bite your lip so you don't flip your lid when your wife calls on her way home from work - long after you've cooked your kid dinner on the gas grill - to remind you not to open the refrigerator or freezer, lest the coolness trapped inside escape and the food spoil. "Yes, honey. Thank you," is the proper response. "Duh" is not.

4. Take a cold shower at 3 a.m. But no baths. You could fall asleep and drown. On the subject of water, drink a lot of it (not bathwater) and encourage family members to do the same - unless they're under 3 and still straddling the world between Disney princess pull-ups and underwear. Push the water, but go with Snow White.

5. Resign yourself to not shaving in the morning. Power outages may have nothing to do with the water, but somehow the excuse of "we didn't have power all night" absolves you from standard office protocol. (Take a nap on your desk next to a handwritten sign that says: "Exhausted. No Power Last Night. Very Hot.")

And finally, in the morning, sit on the porch with pen and paper and enjoy what passes for cool air in Baltimore as you formulate the bill you will send to BGE.

You'll be demanding a refund for the power that you didn't receive, for the $100 of groceries you lost and for the breakfast you paid for at an air-conditioned restaurant in the morning after the long, hot night.

When you calculate the electric portion of this bill, assume the highest level of usage you've ever logged - all the lights on, fans whirring, window units humming, all electronic devices charging - then increase it by 70 percent.

If the cost of electricity is going up, so is the price of any time I'm deprived of it.

Doug Donovan is a Sun staff writer. His e-mail is doug.donovan@baltsun.com.

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