Technical Difficulties or
Did we forget to pay the electrical...?

Out go the lights - down goes the computer - bye-bye go the phones. My boss, wise as she is, declared that there's no sense in anyone staying at the office and that we should all just take off early. Work called on account of power failure - I can live with that. Figured it would give me some time to run and get groceries and a chance to finish off the next installment of Bunny & the Cantelope.

So I'm on my way home and intersection after intersection the lights are out. Ontario traffic laws state that an intersection with malfunctioning signal light is to be treated as a four-way stop. Unfortunately the drivers on the road yesterday decided a malfunctioning signal light means 'woohoo - it's your turn to go, dude.' Gridlock everywhere. My half-hour commute stretched by an additional hour.

Riding the bus home, I began to overhear snippets of conversation.

the whole city is dark
there's a fire at the power plant
Niagara region is dark as well
could it be an attack?
the power company doesn't know what's going on
nobody knows what's going on
almost all the Eastern seaboard is dark

After 20hrs of darkness, the lights are back on and the finger pointing and explanations are about to begin. While I guess this whole situation could lead to a lot of pontificating about lack of resources behind our infrastructure, about our dependance on electricity, or even about how beautiful it was to see the stars again... I think I'll just let it lie, open up Photoshop and finish off this comic. ETA remains tomorrow.