Around 4:15 p.m. I was coming back after registering at my school, and half way to my destination traffic signals started to appear turned off. I thought it was just a local outage. I turned to the radio and KTU was off the air (I listen to KROCK most of the time anyway). Strange. Turned to 1010WINS, and found out that it was more like an interstate thing. From Canada to Detriot and New England to New York, it was a total blackout. Driving was a bitch.

Malls, stores and even movie theatres in Rockland closed. So the partially confirmed plan of going to the movies got cancelled. Instead I spent the evening looking for an open movie rental store... and later - trying to - play pool. Got reassured that I do stink at it. I'm better at it's online version though... :p

The cause of the outage is still unknown. Most "experts" say it was caused by fire at a Niagra power plant in New York. Watching CNN Live showing thousands of people trying to walk out of Manhattan was a painful reminder of 9/11. Even this one guy who was asked over the radio whether he's finding it difficult said "he'd crossed the bridge by foot before, on 9/11." The Mayor of NYC kept repeating that there was no indication of a terrorist hand in the outage. True. Anyway, we got our electricity back here at around 7, but by that time the networks had already got a name for the chaos, "the blackout of 2003".

Overall it was an eventful day. Although it sucked a bit.