My weekend

Well, our smoke alarms work after all.....unless there is a fire. Saturday about 6:00 a.m. we were woken up by the sound of all 3 smoke alarms- jumped out of bed, didn't smell anything, fumbled around to turn on the lights, but no power. Apparently the alarms went off when the power went out. Just plain bizarre that they don't work when there's actually a fire (as you recall I had a small kitchen fire right before Christmas, and they didn't go off), but go off when the power goes out. So anyway, we fumbled around to find a candle or flashlight so Mike could get a chair to stand on to reach up and disconnect each one. (At 6:00 a.m. it was still pitch dark.) After all that we went back to bed and got up a few hours later to see that we still didn't have power. We were going to make the best of it. Mike got the Coleman stove and coffee maker out of the attic and made coffee on the back porch. Then, for Christmas his father had given him a power inverter, so he hooked that up to the truck and ran an extension cord in the house and plugged in the TV and satellite. So, he sat and watched TV while having his morning coffee. :o) I had already planned to do some cleaning that day, so I cleaned up the kitchen a bit and then cleaned the bathroom by flashlight. Then about 1:00 or soo, we decided to get ready to venture out and go find some lunch. After taking a tour of St. Charles to find a place to eat that was open (besides fast food), we ended up at TGI Friday's. As we ate, we "mapped" out our options of "survival" for the rest of the weekend. We were expecting to be without power for a couple of days. We talked about taking laundry over to the in-laws so he'd have clean work clothes on Monday (yes, I was a little behind on laundry), getting some food that we could cook on the grill, staying Saturday night at Mike & Paula's, and so on. After we finished lunch, we headed home and.....we had power! We were shocked that it was restored that fast. We felt very fortunate to have only been without power for 1/2 the day, unlike Karen, my sister and the thousands and thousands of people that are still without.



So, on to the evening....Mike's work had their Christmas party. It was a casual gathering at the owner's home. Very nice, they had a caterer come in and cook and also hired a bartender to tend their bar, everyone enjoyed playing pool, darts, air hockey and the new Nintendo Wii system. (That new system is great....I think Bill's Bar needs one. I didn't play, but it looked like a blast!) They also hired an artist to come in and do characiture drawings for everyone. So, Mike and I had ours done. (The weird part is that we were just talking over and Mike & Paula's Friday night that we wished we knew some one that does that....now we do. The artist is a friend of someone that works with Mike...so we have connections now.) Anyway, here's our picture- looks nothing like me (at least I don't think), but the guys at his work were saying that he looked like Yanni (or however you spell it) in the drawing.
Later in the evening, one of the guys decided to get a group to play a dice game (the one that goes 4 to the left, 5 right and 6 middle...) and we all played with $3 a piece. I won the first round! Then the second round, no one won and every one had to re-ante which was doubling the pot, then the third round... no one one again, so we all re anted and the tripled the pot. Guess who finally won...Mike. He won $63! I thought it was rather exciting. Anyway, we had a great time at the party and enjoyed talking to everyone.