The monthly blog.

Well, we're out of power again in St. Louis. This is really starting to suck. Twice in the past 5 months my power has gone out for more than 24 hours. Last time was 71 hours. Honestly. I was counting down the time until I could say, "Hey, my power's been out for 3 days." Then, one hour before the big anniversary, I felt a cool blast of air conditioning that felt like diving into the lake after a sauna.

I swear that the electric company has a sinister plan behind these outages. The outage in July happened to fall on one of the hottest weeks in the year. Most days it was 95+ degrees during the outage. Suddenly now, the power goes out and the weather drops from the 50's and 60's to the 10's and 20's. It's like Ameren is saying, "See how much your life sucks without our product?" Meanwhile, I shiver and take a bath by splashing water on my hair and face, and by that point say, "OK, that's enough. The deodorant will take care of the rest."

The inconveniences don't stop there. I've been put in the unfortunate position of having to do laundry, read, and study today as opposed to what I truly should be doing -- playing World of Warcraft, watching Futurama, and going to our class Christmas party (which of course means getting schnockered, stumbling home, and falling asleep on the couch in my Christmas sweater). Of course, going to the Christmas party requires shaving and showering, the costs of which outweigh the benefit of going to it -- for a few reasons. (1) I have never shaved with a non-electric razor, and I don't want to show up to the party with tissue on my face. (2) Shaving with an electric razor in public just makes you look like a hobo. (3) Not shaving and showing up at a cocktail party makes you look like a hobo. (4) Taking a cold shower in a cold apartment makes me feel like a hobo that happened to catch a break and get into a luxurious bachelor pad.