I wake up late for work today, my house completely without power. Stifled by the heat (nature’s alarm clock), I run through the checklist of things that could be wrong, fearing the worst, hoping for the best. Fusebox? Check. Paid the utility bill? Check. Alien Invasion? I look out the window for an “Independence Day” moment. Check. The bf comes back from walking the dog and tells me that the streetlights are out and traffic is stacked. We’re not the only ones, it seems. I walk out my front door and in a bizarre moment of randomness, my Colorado-based landlord, who I see once a year, is standing stoically in my front yard. He tells me that power is out for a 30-block radius. I check the sky once more for spacecraft.

From the Washington Post:

“Commuters should expect major delays on Metro’s Red Line this morning after a fire on the tracks near the Dupont Circle station, officials said. At the same time, a power outage in downtown Washington is affecting thousands of homes and offices, as well as traffic signals and Metro elevators and lighting.”

Unfortunately I didn’t read this before descending into the bowels of the unlit Shaw metro station this morning. Apparently metro trains run on a separate power source, so it was kind of spooky to see the metro sans light, but not so cool to be on a red line train about to pull into farragut station when it stops for 15 minutes mid-tunnel with no explanation other than the pannicked voice of a conductor who yells over the intercom, “WE HAVE AN EMERGENCY SITUATION ON THIS TRAIN!” The conductor eventually backs up the train to metro center and off-loads us. Between delays, switching tracks, and loading/unloading twice, I spend over an hour on metro among disgruntled riders, but it’s still better than the horror of walking to work through an open air sauna wearing dress clothes. When I finally exit farragut, there are several fire trucks surrounding the station. I ask a fellow passenger who was talking to a fireman what the deal is, and he tells me there was a bomb threat.

This morning I help four separate groups of tourists negotiate the traffic and find their destinations. They approach me specifically from among the crowds of people, fixating on me like zombie food. ALL of them wear American flag apparel, and I try to discern this morning aura of helpfulness that draws them to me through the common patriotism that they share, but I have no luck making sense of it.

It’s not even lunchtime, and despite the absence of a hockey mask wearing, chainsaw weilding maniac, Friday the 13th has not dissapointed me. I’m now safely at my desk. Surely Jason can’t get me here.

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