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Meet Bob and Linda; typical suburbanites trying to navigate the challenges of two kids in college, an ever expanding waistline and a dog with a taste for balcony. We find them pedaling back from a pizza buffet dinner, the first meal in 4 days that wasn't some forgotten frozen meat cooked on a grill or eaten out of a soggy cooler. Unbenounced to them, as they wind past the fallen trees and stacks of garbage bags they are about to enter . . . . the powerless zone



Their conversation revolved around the promise electricity returning to their suburban home. There were whispers from neighbors about electric company trucks stalking the streets, even predictions of an AC filled evening. It was too much to hope for. Just today, neighbors across the street who previously had their power restored had it disappear mysteriously while making beanieweenie. Their whole street was sliding into another dark night.



Just then they saw it, the electric glow that could only come from a television. The street was quiet, there were no droning generator sounds. They pedaled on. Over there! Two sconces burned on either side of a front door. They pedaled faster. There were signs of light and free flowing electrons everywhere, both sides of the street!



They finally came to their own block. The usual gaggle of neighbors chatting in the twilight were no where to be found. They were in their houses cooking and showering. They could taste the anticipation and the pizza burps from all the pedaling. Their next door neighbors and the ones across the street - both houses lit up like Christmas morning! They stopped in front of their own well manicured domicile with mouths agape. Every house up and down the street was basking in alternating current except theirs. The windows were black as coal, no AC unit puring beside the house, no prospect of seeing the Gilmore Girls tonight.



They reluctantly picked up their flashlights and sloughed off to the bathroom to get ready for another night on the living room floor wondering if they would every break free from . . . the powerless zone