At any moment, the lights could go dark

I really wanted to do something similar to what I did for the last entry, and make my way through the World Almanac, picking out random facts you may or may not find intriguing.

But I fear that won't be an option tonight. Our landlords, for better or worse, have decided that they want to upgrade the electricity service to ours and surrounding buildings. To do that, they'll have to turn off the juice overnight.

Except we don't quite know when this is supposed to happen. The first target night was last night; but everything stayed on.

The letter they left for us said that if power wasn't off by midnight, it wouldn't be turned off at all that night. Midnight Wednesday came and went without incident.

So, here I am, with a trusty lantern - at right - within reach, waiting for something that may or may not happen.

(No, wiseasses, I'm not going to use the image of a lantern to light up a room. We have an actual version of the lantern at right.)

It's kind of frustrating, actually. Never mind the fact that everyone in the building needs to find an alternative to a plugged-in alarm clock. That's the most pressing of the problems.

Wouldn't it have been easier to do in the daytime, when most folks are at work? At least the water still works then, and I can get by with a lantern in the shower.

But I'm a night owl, which is a prerequisite for being a sportswriter. So I'm SOL, I guess. Luckily, I'm tired as hell, thanks to a lack of sleep last night (went to bed to late), getting up early and taking a decent road trip to Richmond today. I actually nodded off during the 7 p.m. Simpsons, which is unheard of. (I did that while boiling water to make dinner, which is damn near f--king brilliant.)

Now, I'm just hoping I haven't wasted all this time to write a blog that won't get saved, and will disappear the second the flow cuts off. And of course, I'm not helping myself by continuing to ramble on about nothing in particular.

I better not push my luck anymore. It's 11:06. Darkness may be just around the corner. Save, save, save...

EDIT: Save, obviously, went OK. I'll be posting updates at every 10 minutes, just for the hell of it. If, suddenly, the updates stop, you know what happened.