You may have heard about this storm that blew into California recently. All over California at the same time, which is as neat a trick as you are likely to see. Usually the storm has to blow into one part and then move across or down to another part the next day, because we’re a really big state. Apparently, this storm knows from big.

Yesterday our power went out at 9:30am, so I called the painting guy I had an appointment with and said, You know, it’s cold and dark here, let’s postpone. He said, Yeah, I’ve kinda been wondering if I even want to leave my office today. I didn’t need any extra pushing — a café! With lattés and music and people going by! Just what I need on a stormy day!

The lights kept going out at Coffee Society.

I drove back home, where I discovered the Borders was closed and the local café was dark (though packed with people, hilariously enough — no idea what they were all drinking). I bought some sushi at the local market and drove around. Branches down everywhere. I saw one car that had been crushed by a falling tree (wish I’d gotten a picture of that). I listened to a lot of my podcasts of “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me (the NPR news quiz)” and eventually went to Club Swanky, where the kids were having a holiday day camp. They both seemed okay with having to stay at the club even past the end time of the camp, but by 3pm both of them were like, Time to GO, Mom.

So, what to do? I took them to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, which was cute (not a good movie, per se, but cute, and the kids really liked it). Then we looked for a restaurant — many of them were closed by power outages. I called home, and the voicemail picked up immediately, which meant the power was still out.

We ended up back at the Pruneyard, where everyone had decided to go for dinner last night, so we waited a long time for a table. During dinner, Darin and I decided we should stay at a hotel that night, so he phoned around to a couple of hotels. Nothing doing: either full up, or closed for remodeling.

We drove home, I found one of our flashlights in the pitch black, and I packed us an overnight case. We drove to the hotel around the corner from our house, where they gave us a so-so room (what the hell, we had a place to sleep and it was warm). The kids were at Defcon 5 for a while, until they actually lay down, at which point they were asleep.Darin and I watched the news for a while. Nothing about the Storm of the Century. Lots about Britney Spears, though. Yay.

I also apparently missed some story about tigers at the zoo, but that’s okay: I don’t need to know. Affects my life not at all.

In the morning I called home and the phone rang, which meant the power was back on. So we did what anybody would have done: we went out to find breakfast somewhere. Then we came home, where the kids have permission to play video games all day and have taken us up on that proposition.I hear massive thunder overhead. If we lose power again, though, we’re staying here. A night’s sleep with absolutely no distractions from lights will do us all a world of good.