Best Laid Plans

In my day-to-day schedule, it's far more likely that my well-planned day will fall apart by 9:00 a.m. than not. But usually it's little things, I get derailed by circumstance or my own reshifting priorities, or work coming in from clients, etc.

Today started with this to-do list:

1. Download writing assignment from client and write it, send back to client via e-mail.

2. Download proofing job from client, proof, send back to client via e-mail.

3. Download other proofing job from client, proof, send back to client via e-mail.

4. Draft Supernatural Sisters blog post I forgot to do last night.

5. Draft list of questions for June class speakers and e-mail.

6. Do laundry.

7. Clean house, mostly vacuuming and mopping.

See a pattern there? I bet some of you might guess what happened as I launched into these tasks.

The power went out, accompanied by a giant boom from a block or two away.

It stayed out.

The "convenience" of paperless billing reverses at moments like this, because I have nothing with the electric company's number on it. Though I confess I did put the battery in my laptop, reboot it, and try to go online to get the number before going DUH, my router runs on electricity.

I found a number (it was the Choice line, about changing electric generators, though) and went outside with my cell phone to see if I could back-door in to PPL's main switchboard, but no luck. While I was out two other neighbors came out to see if my power was out, too. One guy said he'd called and reported it, and the automated recording told him it would be back up in 3 hours.

Cr**.

I almost seized the moment and spent the time reading. Because none of those things on my to-do list could be done, or not done the way I wanted to do them, without electricity. But my client work really needed to be done, so I hauled myself to B&N and their free WiFi.

An hour later, my husband called me. He'd tried the house first and the answering machine came on, sans recording, which meant the power was already back. Cr** again. I checked the outage report and sure enough, it said our account had no outage. So I guess I should have stayed home anyway.

So five of the items on the to-do list are done, but I still have two big ones, Number One will be home in half an hour, and I won't have time to get to the book again before we go to the Main Event, an intro to middle school that lasts for two and a half hours.

Check back tomorrow for the next installment of Natalie's Excuse Week! *sigh*