by Melissa Brunner

There's nothing like a good, extended power outage to make you realize how much we use power for! For starters, there's the annoying habit of flipping the switch when you walk in the room - even though you know the light isn't going to come on!

Power at our house went out around 11pm Thursday, just as the storm was starting. When I got home from work around 11:30pm, I knew I couldn't turn on the TV to find out what was happening, but I thought I'd go to some web sites on my IPad. No such luck. That new wireless modem I've been enjoying at my house? Yep - it takes electricity to make it go!

So all I had was my phone. And by Friday morning the battery was running pretty low. Still no power, so it was still my only line to the world. I did plug it into the vehicle charger for a while!

What else did I do without power? Well, I read the newspaper, read a book for a while - and I even headed outdoors to get a start on cleaning up the fallen trees around our yard!

What do you miss when the power is out?