Today was a v. all-American day in the heartland. I began the day with some not-so-very-all-American sloth and laziness, but I paid the price for it -- just as I was about to get in the shower at one p.m., the power went out, which meant that I had to take my shower in the dark. The power flickered off and on all afternoon, which is likely to continue over the next couple of days. All of the power lines are still covered in the heavy ice that we got on Thursday, and with the winds picking up and snow starting to fall again, the ice-covered lines could easily snap. The ice isn't going away anytime soon, either, since it's currently below zero and tomorrow night's low temperature could get to -12. Brrrrr.
My dad and my brother spent some time this afternoon messing around with the generator that my father rented in preparation for this storm -- they rented a generator last year during the ice storm of the century, and were v. thankful since many people were out of power for several days. So far our power has been on since five or six p.m., but there's no telling what the next few days will bring.
But, for the most part, we all stayed indoors and participated in some v. family-oriented activities. Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, and my cousin Andrew (aka Drewbaby) came down, my grandmother came out, and we snacked incessantly before my dad made pizza for dinner. The name of the game today was canasta: a two-deck card game that we used to play all the time in Ukraine but really haven't played much since. It's really quite fun; it's part of the rummy family of card games, so you have to lay down triplets or more of the same face value (your initial lay-down is called the "meld", hence the title of my post), eventually building up to a canasta of seven of a kind (either natural or "dirty", which uses wildcards to build the canasta). I ended up playing two and a half times, since we called the third game quits around 11pm so that the visitors could return to Gram's house for the night. While I'm hopeful that we have a game of Rail Baron in the future while I'm home for Christmas, I bet we'll play canasta again -- it's definitely less time-consuming than Rail Baron, but a good change of pace from hearts.
My parents, brother and I used to play a lot of games in Ukraine -- it was one of the only things we could do, since we couldn't understand any of the television programming and we were there before the days of the (user-friendly, >28k-modem-speed) internet. In fact, the only activities I remember us doing are playing card games, playing Monopoly, and watching each other play old-school computer games (a pastime with limited audience participation, particularly since my brother, father and I are susceptible to motion sickness and could only watch or play for a little bit before being out of commission). Oh, and trying to find edible food, and reading the same books over and over again, and listening to Voice of America radio when the cranes outside our building weren't parked in the position that would block our signal. Those were the days! It's no wonder we're all just a little bit strange...
I should really go to bed; I got my parents to watch an episode of "House" from 12-1am, which they loved, although they'll likely never see it again since it's not on CBS. Now I have to sleep, so that I can get up early to do some wrapping before going to Gram's for Christmas dinner. Goodnight!
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