Crazy storm

I know I missed out on yesterday's posting, but we had a giant storm and lost our electricity. That's my excuse. I was sitting in the living room, playing Monopoly with Philip while Sofia and Angelina ran rings around us. I'm usually unexceptional at Monopoly, but this time I had a green property monopoly, the dark purple ones right after Go, both utilities, and all 4 railroads. I had 1 house on each of the green ones and 4 on the purple Baltics. I kept thinking about how this game was invented in Atlantic City during the Depression, and how I wished I could amass property like this right now. I was also remembering -- amazingly enough, given how long ago it was -- a book I read when I was a kid about how to win at Monopoly. Apparently you could take a prince or a pauper strategy, although I don't remember what they are right now. Also, the book calculated the likelihood of landing on each of the properties, and -- surprisingly -- it's not random.

I was in the midst of cleaning Philip out of house and home, when the wind started to blow wildly. We not-so-intelligently crowded to the window, while we watched trees sway and a giant branch come down in our neighbor's yard. Then the rain came down, literally in sheets. Soon after that, the electricity shut off, and the house began to heat up. Pretty crazy... Bojan ran out to move the Hyundai, because it was situated under the weak tree that we've begged the County to get rid of. We call it the Moon Tree, because Philip used to see the moon behind it when he was younger than Angelina is now. Luckily, the Moon Tree sustained little damage. (Which is less than I can say for my parents, who had one of their trees go crashing through their neighbor's roof, rendering the place uninhabitable.) Once it was clear that the electricity would be out for a while, the kids starting asking for hot chocolate and talking about how they wanted to cuddle up with blankets. I guess they were remembering Snowmageddon, when we last lost electricity and it hit 42 degrees F in our house overnight.

After a couple of hours of sweating in a steamy house, we headed out for dinner in Downtown Silver Spring. It was great to get out, and we managed to snag an outside table at Austin Grill. We ended up sitting between two sets of neighbors -- one of whom we knew, and the other whom we hadn't met before. Service was awful, but luckily the kids were able to run around by the sprayground. By the time we got home, our power had returned, thank God and PEPCO.

Anyway, with all of that, I just didn't have time to post yesterday. And then today, when I went to drop Angelina off at Miss Wiwin's, I noticed that her giant red minivan was no longer there. It turned out that their power had never come back on, so Miss Winwin had taken her family to her sister's place. And Northwood Camp was closed for the same reason, so I designated it a girls' day out. We went to Brookside Gardens, which was also closed due to power outages. Luckily, the gardens themselves were open, so we saw lots of flowers and butterflies (pictures to follow). We're home now, with Sofia playing a computer game (bad mom!) and Angelina blessedly taking a nap. So, now is the time to say what I'm grateful for today:

1. Electricity, and PEPCO's ability to restore it in our neighborhood
2. That I have an understanding workplace that lets me take these unexpected and unavoidable days off
3. Library books, especially the fun one I'm reading now
4. Upgrading to a free Blackberry
5. The beauty of Brookside Gardens -- really nature on a leash!
6. (Should be #1): Spending fun times with Angelina and Sofia (to be extended to include Philip, when we pick him up later today.

Okay, time to try to sneak some work in while the girls are occupied and the electricity is still on. Cheers!