After spending the morning volunteering, I came home to a house without power. The county is doing major construction on the road down the street and someone cut an underground cable -- or so the utility company said. As a result, the neighborhood was left in the "dark" from 11:48 a.m. until about 5:30 p.m.

As I've mentioned before, the booming side business is run out of my home office, so a power outage does not bode well for my productivity. Not only was I unable to do any work all afternoon, I couldn't clean the carpets, make the pasta sauce that has to simmer for 3 hours or do any more loads of laundry.

After visiting with my neighbor for a while, I came home and laid down. Two hours later I woke up to a dark and cold house. By the time my daughter got off the school bus, it was clear we were not eating anything homemade from my kitchen so after conferring with my husband we decided to go out to eat. We had plans to dine out tomorrow as part of a fund-raiser for Mini Me's school, so we just switched it to tonight and the school will have to do without our money.

Of course, just as we were walking out the door to go to dinner, the power came back on. However, by this point, we all were tired and hungry -- and I was cranky from lack of productivity today -- so we opted to continue on to the restaurant.

When we got home, I was able to complete one project -- a pro bono job that I do monthly. But somehow in the power outage my printer got screwed up, so I can't officially finish it until I can get that figured out -- probably in the morning.

Meanwhile, I was surprised at how fast the clothes dried on the outside line today. I was able to get two loads of laundry washed, air dried and put away. I put one load in the drier because it had stuff I needed to dry faster, but I think ultimately it would have been speedier to hang everything outside.

Also, I did get a free drink at Starbucks this morning because they messed up my order. Unfortunately for me, two venti teas is more than my bladder can handle, so I ended up giving the extra one to the saintly lady who sits with Mini Me during math time and tries to make sense of what's going on in that brillant little mind of hers.

I now think I've crossed the line into babbling, so that's it for me tonight folks....