As Ken was driving closer to my school this morning (yes, the carpool thing again!), we noticed that the traffic lights were out on most streets.  In fact, the street that runs behind the school was completely blocked off by squad cars.  Hmmm, I thought.  When Ken dropped me off at the front, there were Westar trucks all over the place, trying to fix something or another.  Turns out the power was out for a whole grid of the city, including my school and its neighborhood and some of the surrounding areas.  The workers had managed to get most everything back up and running except for our school.  We kept getting updates, but it’s a little hard to do work in our building without a computer or lights!

Picture this:  8 teachers sitting in the hallway chatting.  Our coffee makers/tea pots plugged into the emergency outlets in the hall.  (The hallways and bathrooms were the only lights hooked up to the generators.)  We planned how we were going to teach without lights, overheads, computers, Smartboards and determined a fun day with games and reading time huddled around the windows with the blinds fully open.
The first bell rang at 8:50 am and the kids streamed down the hallway, trying to turn on the lights in the classrooms to no avail.  Finally, about 9:30am, they came back on.  It was really nice being able to talk to other teachers without worrying about other stuff that needed to be done.  Electricity has its perks, but it being down this morning was most definitely welcome!