a birthday dinner that wasn't ...

Last night (Apr. 18th) was Karolina's 21st birthday. She was going out with a friend, but before her night of dancing Jay and I invited her over for dinner and of course some birthday cake. Dinner was supposed to be sometime between 7:30 - 8. However just after 6pm the power went out. We didn't even have emergency lights on in the hallway. It was pitch black. I wasn't too worried, after all this is downtown Toronto. I was sure they'd have us up and running in a few minutes, 2 hours tops. Our concierge announced over the PA system that the power went out in Bremner, Fort York, and Lower Spadina, and that Hydro is working on it. By 8:45 pm the power was back on in the building across the street from us. I was sure it was just a matter of minutes before we had ours, and dinner plans weren't lost. But by 9:30pm that hope has died. Karolina and her friend had dinner on their own, they're weren't up to climbing up and down 28 flights of stairs in complete darkness. Quite frankly neither was I.

So Jay and I had dinner by ourselves as well... we made berry water...had a whole bunch of candles lit...
and cooked by one of those handy book lights... we felt so lucky to have a natural gas stove...
mmmm pasta is almost ready...
and so is the sauce....
yum... I cheesed mine up....
After dinner my hopes were still high. After all I have 2 dogs I need to take out for a walk. I was confident power will come back by 11pm, and I sure hoped no one was stuck in our elevators.... scary. By 11pm we were still in the dark, and so the hours rolled by. By 2am still in the dark, it was so surreal to look out our window and see all these lights on and yet not to have any. At 2:20 am, the concierge announced that Toronto Hydro is ready to reset our power and we should be up and running in 20 to 40 min. By 3am, still in darkness, I gave up hope and we went to bed.

At 6:30 am Honey was all over me, she really needed to go out. It's been over 12h since her last walk. I had a dream that we had power, but that was only a dream, all our clocks were still dead. But strangely the lights were on in the hallway. Jay took the girls out and he learned that the lights are our emergency lights and only one elevator is running. The whole neighborhood had power but not our building. At 9am the concierge announced that electricians are working on the problem and we should have power in 5 to 6 hours... yay!!!

Well one elevator is better than no elevator. We went downstairs for coffee. We could tell exactly who lived in our building, by their unshowered appearance, crumpled outfits, bleary eyed stares, and messy hairdos. Since no one could get in to park their cars, the front of our building was a big parking lot... thank god there was no fire emergency... some cars got ticketed for their chosen spots though.
We invited the girls for a late birthday lunch... one had to wait for the elevator a bit, but a wait was no climb :)
we had champagne with hibiscus flowers...
tomato salad with extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and basil..
and more pasta :)
this time topped with crab legs... We didn't open our fridge or freezer until it was necessary to do so... the butter was still hard and cold and ice cubes were still frozen...
and a chocolate-mocha birthday cake....
We sat and chatted... and then decided to go to the Music Gardens, since it was time to walk the girls... ummmm the elevator wasn't working.... Jay stayed home and we took the stairs... it's quite a dizzy work out, carrying wriggling dogs....

Jay informed me that the concierge announced that Hydro has shut down our one working elevator because it was being overworked... well duhhhh... 15 min later the power was back..... I was so freaking happy to hear that.... Finally I can take a shower....
Supposedly the power outage was due to a flood in a nearby building that caused the main power line to blow a hole in our power box.. or something... I'm not really sure... I have access to the internet and hot water... all is good in my world once again...