I woke before the alarm today and then realized that the power had gone out about 15 minutes earlier. It was off for 6 hours which made things interesting. Finding work-arounds for all the usual events wasn't possible, but a few worked. Hot water from the tap made a warmish oatmeal and lukewarm tea flavoured beverage. Lunch was a tuna sandwich with fruit and yougurt -- easy peasy. I read through the text book to find a few new exam questions but couldn't get to the online test bank to search for others. So, I moved on to the next major task -- reading theses. There are three that need to be back by beginning of the week. I finished one by the faint light from the window. It was still very cloudy and extremely windy -- gusts would have been over 80 km/h with sustained winds of 60+ km/h. Tree falls were most likely the cause of the outage. It was definitely loud throughout the morning and did calm down by late afternoon. Luckily the temperature was about 12-14C outside, so we didn't freeze inside (I have electric heat), but I did resort to wearing those thin stretchy gloves while reading -- that made page turning a bit of a challenge <smile>. The feline dude was agitated again. It may be that the quiet in the house is unsettling for him -- no humming machines -- or it might just have been the wind noise and debris hitting the house.
While this was a bit of a disruption to the usual day for many people, it was still fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. This made me think about how as humans we can become quite self-centred, becoming irritated by external forces that we can't control, but which mess with our plans. It is a bit odd when you think about it. Small inconveniences should challenge us to rethink our planned approach to the day or event, bringing us to a new way to get things done. Granted some things won't be possible, but they can be pushed onto a later agenda while moving something from future work plans to today. Seeing the flexibility available in that tightly planned schedule can be somewhat freeing and remind us that there is more than one way to get through the maze of the 'to do' list. It is not a linear beast, but much more 3D in the way we can approach it. Ain't that a cool idea <grin>.
A song that came to mind today was for the main chorus lines, since the weather events today and yesterday were nasty but not totally catastrophic. The song shared here uses modified lyrics from the traditional folk song, but the central message is the same. This version is sung by a number of people and was included on a Nancy Griffith album. Enjoy!
Wasn't that a mighty storm -- Nancy Griffith (and others)
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