Power failed - as though I was in Andhra Pradesh

I know these days I am not writing about my yatras in India. That's because it is still many months away. In the meantime, my life is not at standstill. Interesting things are happening. My previous posts were about 'Amma' and I consider it as part of my (life's) yatra. Now this post is about how to make life interesting inspite of hurdles.
Last Saturday, Dec 5th evening we were watching the movie 'My Fair Lady' from 1964. I don't normally watch much TV - just a couple of game shows and some news. But this one is my favorite and I have seen it many many times and I did read 'Pygmalion' during student days. Suddenly just around 6 p.m., the power went off. Normally, it returns within minutes. This time, it did not. I had rice cooking in the cooker. The side dishes were done by then. My husband suggested that we go out to eat. At the beginning I did not agree because, my cooking was almost done. We waited till 7:30 p.m and decided to go for a Pizza. Before that, I called the First Energy emergency number to report the power failure. Could talk to only the machine. According to that voice, the power would resume by 8:30 p.m. and I would get a call to check to see whether we got it resolved. Thanks to the Cell phones, we had alternate number.
I started singing bhajans (I remembered Amma saying 'sing bhajan') and then some old devotional songs private as well as from the movies. Then we read the first two chapters of Bhagavad Geetha. When it was 7:30 p.m, Rao disconnected the electric garage door and lifted the door up for us to take the car out.
We went to the nearest Pizza place which was empty and one young man sitting inside said that they had power gone too. The next one was Little Caesars on Richmond road and they had a large cheese pizza for $4.99. We came home with the dinner. Lighted the candles and put one in each room.(My match box and emergency candle kit were handy). Topped the pizza with my vegetable dish and had candle light dinner. We finished eating around 8:15 p.m. and the power came back. I finished cooking the rice. No phone call from the Electric company till 10 p.m. and again they called at 1:11 a.m. while we were asleep.

This dinner was more peaceful because our focus was on the food - not on the TV. There was conversation - not just listening to the repetetion on the TV. That short time was spent as a family.