Parts of this past weekend seem like some gigantic cosmic joke---the type where you have one punchline that serves for multiple questions. Where were the Philatelys when the lights went out? In the dark. Where were the Philatelys when the hotel gave their room to someone else? In the dark. Where were the Philatelys when the fire alarm went off? In the dark.

The girls and I went to the Boston area this past weekend for a family party for my niece, N. It was an adventure. It was such an adventure that I am still recovering. But at least I did not have these adventures after having been evacuated from Sanibel Island in Hurricane Charley. My cousin and his family had that honor.

We flew to Boston on Saturday morning. The flight was ten minutes late because it waited for some passengers from Appleton but was otherwise uneventful. The flight gave no hint of the weekend to come. The rental car company, my favorite rental car company, provided no adventures either. I would not buy the Mazda they gave us but only because I did not like the seats. They pushed my head forward at a strange angle. That problem was not part of an adventure. It merely was a common inconvenience of being short.

We made it just in time for a family luncheon. The luncheon was lovely. (Actually, the hotel failed to put out centerpieces but I did not notice. The hotel also failed to put out soda pop but I drink juice with bagels and blintzes and did not notice that problem either.) In the middle of the luncheon, the lights went out (as did the air conditioning and the elevators and everything else electrical although those other problems were not yet problems.) The caterer announced that there was an area power problem and brought out �vigil� candles, the ones in the little jars. The luncheon proceeded by candlelight.

After lunch, I checked us into the hotel. The computer was down (obviously) and they were having some difficulty assigning rooms by hand but they had figured out some sort of system---or so I thought. We got our room assignment, Room 416, but we did not put our suitcases in there. We put them in the room of my sister, Maxiegirl, because she was on the first floor and the thought of hauling bricks and other necessities up four flights of stairs was not attractive. A poster in the lobby was announcing that the power company estimated that the power would come on by dinnertime so waiting on the suitcases seemed logical. Logical it was. Smart it wasn�t.

Sometime around 4:00 or so, I heard a rumor that the power company, which had had a transformer in a substation burn, was estimating that some areas would have power by dinner but that our area was not one of them. The estimate changed to 1:00 a.m. so I decided to suck up my gut, organize the girls, and haul the suitcases up to Room 416. I opened the door and saw someone else�s luggage in there. I closed the door quickly, grateful I had not seen people in there doing some of the things people do when they are not expecting company.

I thought about what to do next. I had my luggage and I was not hauling it back down to the lobby only to haul it up. Day had her luggage most of the way up so I had her wait with the luggage. Kat, being Kat, was lagging behind and had not even begun to carry her luggage up. (I so hate it when dilatory action is rewarded. Sigh.) I returned to the lobby.

I stood in line behind people who were not yelling about not getting the types of rooms they wanted, about being in the dark, about having electric razors and not being able to shave, and about being warm. Eventually, I worked my way to the front. I was very polite. They admitted they had given away the room they had assigned me. They offered to make the other people move. I figured that they would have to find them first and that it could take until midnight.

They were amazed at how mellow I was about the situation as So was I. They promised to fix it but they said it would take a while. They had no ideas about how to get Day off the fourth floor short of hauling luggage down. Luckily, my Dad pointed out that he had a room on the fourth floor and that we could put the luggage in his room temporarily. So, I got my exercise, climbed back up, and stored the luggage in Mom and Dad�s room. Kat put hers back in Maxiegirl�s room but was smart enough not to gloat. (Maturity, even glimmers of it, are a good thing.)

I stood by the desk for a while and nothing happened. I went back over to the couches in the lobby where my mother and her minions were holding court (and a lovely court it was too. Hi, Mom!) I waited and waited and waited. Then I began to become concerned. I heard the rumor that the hotel had had forty people stay over who were not supposed to do so. I did not panic but I did get concerned. So I waited through the line of irate people again. Yes, they had forgotten me. Luckily, they could find me a room�Room 425. I traipsed up the stairs again. The room was empty. I quickly filled it with our luggage. Someone else could do the moving next time.

In the meantime, my parents realized that everyone would be in the dark in their own bathrooms. My father approached the desk, which had run out of flashlights to give out. He offered to buy some flashlights for our extended family as long as they agreed to reimburse us. They responded like children. They would do it theyselves. He nabbed enough for us, if you counted the flashlight my sister S (who lived nearby) agreed to give my brother.

The evening passed uneventfully (if you do not count trying to round up my family and get them to agree on a plan for dinner. We cannot organize in the light and we cannot organize in the dark, either.) Amazingly, Maxiegirl and I were able to stick to our plan of having my teenage girls stay in her room with her kids to give her a bit of a break. (As some of you may recall, Maxiegirl lost her husband last summer.) Her son was willing to stay with my girls as long as he had his own private glowstick---and he did.

At approximately 11:00, earlier than predicted, the lights came on. We were no longer in the dark. You would have thought that Maxiegirl and I would remain in the dark but you would be wrong. Did you know that people automatically turn on foyer lights and bathroom lights even when the power is out? Did you know that when those lights do not come on, they do not think to turn them off? If you thought so, pat yourself on the back.

I thought the adventure was over but I was wrong. Sunday was uneventful, more or less. The party was lovely. We managed to agree on a dinner plan with minimum tussling. Dinner was lovely and a lot of fun. We said our goodbyes to cousins we might not see in the morning and went to bed.

The next thing that I know, I heard a noise in the hallway. It sounded like an alarm and it was definitely in the hallway. I swore (and forgave myself because it was extreme provocation) and woke Maxiegirl. She had a key to the kids� room on the first floor and she flew down there while I gathered the key to my room. When she got there, her daughter and Kat were up and they were trying to wake Day. I got there minutes after her. She dragged her six-year-old son out of his �nest� on the floor while I waited for Day to grab her glasses and flip-flops. I grabbed the blanket off the floor and we headed out.

We found a bench outside the hotel. My girls and Maxie�s daughter sat down. She placed her son on Kat�s lap and we threw the blanket over them. The bench became cozier when the Charley survivors made their way down the stairs. We put those girls on the bench too. Eventually, we learned we could go back to our rooms. (The hotel desk people, who apparently were badly trained enough to tell my confused father who called them to ask what to do that �some people were going outside,� also were badly enough trained not to come out and tell the evacuees that it was a false alarm and that we could come back in. Perhaps they liked the quiet.) The kids were real troopers and returned to their room without playing musical beds.

And there we were, back in the dark and there we stayed until morning.

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