Well, today’s been fun.

It’s interesting when you don’t know what the hell’s going on, when you don’t have a God’s-eye view of things, when you’re just an insignificant, powerless, non-omniscient little human being, limited to gathering information from your immediate surroundings.

First you think it’s just your floor.

Then you think it’s just your building.

Then you think it’s just your local area. Maybe, maybe your entire city.

And then you learn it spans two countries.

Holy shit.

So, I was sitting at my desk in the state office building in Newark, New Jersey, around 4:15 p.m. I’d just logged onto Instant Messenger, and Jon said hi; he said he’d found a cool web site and had just linked to it on his blog. I was about to open a browser window to check out his site. And then —

My computer flicked off and then back on, rebooting. I stepped out into the hallway and saw a sea of secretaries’ computer screens booting up. The word COMPAQ all over the place. Hee hee. That was cute. I walked back into my office.

And then —

POOF.

My computer was off. My lights were off. I turned around — all the lights were off.

Okay… this is interesting.

We walked out of our offices and milled about the main area of the floor, sun shining in through some of the office windows. One of my colleagues was on the phone with his wife, who also works in Newark; apparently her building was out, too. Wow, so it’s not just our building then.

Then another colleague stepped out of his office. “My wife just called. She works at CBS News in the city and they don’t have power either.”

What? Not just Newark, but Manhattan, too?

Holy fuck.

Then I heard someone say she’d been on the phone with someone and that power was out in Toronto.

No, that can’t be right. Holy holy fuck.

One of the secretaries wondered if it was terrorism. I doubted it. I figured it was the heat.

Another colleague and I both commute home to Jersey City by PATH train from Newark Penn Station. We figured the trains wouldn’t be running, but maybe there were buses. So we walked down four flights of stairs (I feel bad for all those people who had to evacuate skyscrapers) and out into the street, and then we walked the 10-minute walk to Penn Station.

We hung out in the lobby of the train station. Rumors were spreading — power was out in Detroit; power was out in California. An announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Your attention please. This is a national power failure. We repeat, this is a national power failure.” Then something about no trains running.

One sassy black woman said, “I know what this means. I know what this means. The terrorists are back.”

It started to seem very possible. I had this sinking feeling. Oh, god. They’ve got us again. We thought we were prepared, but no. They’ve knocked out power all over the country, cutting our information sources, so nobody knows what’s happening, and they’re going to launch missiles at us. This is payback for Iraq. Everything seemed so surreal — it didn’t seem so far-fetched. I wondered if this were possibly my last day on earth.

We walked over to the bus area to catch a bus to Jersey City.

Crowds of people waiting for buses to Jersey City. Very few buses. Near-empty buses, stopping, but picking up nobody, because they were stupidly going other places — infuriating, when there were all these people standing around trying to get home. It was hot and stuffy and sweaty and I was starting to feel light-headed.

We went back into the station and ran into one of the employees of our client state agency. I bought water. Then the three of us went to the lobby of the Hilton, connected to the train station, possibly to get drinks at the bar. The bar was too crowded, but there was a small radio in the lobby. We listened to the news. Bloomberg was saying there was no evidence that this was terrorism. Thank fucking god. I felt myself relax. Yay! Just an incredibly massive power failure. I love the post-9/11 era.

My cell phone rang. I’d been trying to make calls, mostly without success, so it was good to hear the phone ring. It was my mom. She was stuck at work on the Upper East Side. She had no idea where my dad was, because although he works in Manhattan, he’d left the office early, and she wondered if he was stuck on a train. My brother works on Long Island, but he’s in Montreal on vacation right now.

I said goodbye to my mom. The three of us went back to the bus area. It was now 6:10. They’d organized everyone into a line by this point.

The line was huge.

And there were barely any buses showing up.

We walked a block away and found a taxi. Twenty bucks to Jersey City. Great! We can split twenty bucks. No, he said — twenty bucks each.

We turned him down on principle. Goddamn price gouging taxicab opportunist.

There was a van nearby. One of those shuttle vans. I heard someone say Hoboken. Hey! I could walk home from Hoboken. I ran over to it. There was only room for one more person, and that was me. As for my colleagues — well — I hope they found a way home. As the door closed, I looked at them with a pained look on my face, as if to say, “I sincerely wish there was room for you two and I feel like crap that there’s not.” I’m sure they understood. Um, maybe. I guess I’ll find out eventually.

So I was on a van with six other passengers, sitting between two blond women (too bad I’m gay). The woman on my right had just landed at Newark Airport after coming home from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. She’d taken a cab to Newark Penn Station, and, whoops. She was going to Jersey City too; fortunately the driver was nice, and she was willing to go to Jersey City first.

I tried calling my dad — he’d just gotten home. He’d been stuck on a train, but then it started again, but he got stuck somewhere, so he called a friend, who picked him up and took him home.

Finally, just after 7:15, after winding our way through random Jersey City streets, we arrived near the Holland Tunnel. I could see the powerless sunny skyline across the Hudson.

She stopped to let us two Jersey Cityites out. She wanted twenty bucks each. Great. I had two bucks in my wallet. I’d said this, but her English was much worse than her Spanish. So I explained again. She gave me her card. My fellow Jersey Cityite and I left and started walking.

And she told me her whole story. She was returning from the Dominican Republic early because her friend’s 31-year-old daughter had been murdered yesterday. What??? Oh my god. So she’d traveled the six hours from wherever she was in the Dominican Republic, to the airport, crying along the way, then flown to Newark, then gotten stuck at Penn Station in an enormous power failure. Ugh.

As we walked along the streets, I saw lights on in some brownstones. Awesome! And sure enough — after my new friend and I parted ways, and once I’d walked down my block and stepped into my building — I realized we had power.

Nice!

I changed out of my sweaty office clothes. I turned on my air conditioner, my television, and my computer. (Priorities.) I looked at my clock — it was blinking, but the time was correct, so the power must have only flickered out for a second here.

After gorging myself on TV news for a while, I saw that the sun was going down. So I put on my sneakers and walked down to the Hudson River.

As I walked, I saw that the area near the waterfront had no power. Okay. New York to the east, and the Jersey City waterfront to the east, and Newark to the west — no power. My neighborhood — power.

Odd.

I stood on the Hudson River promenade. I listened and looked at the water lapping against the rocks. I leaned against the railing and stared east at the Manhattan skyline. Most of it was dark, but much of Lower Manhattan had power. It was an eerie reversal from two years ago.

It was like Lower Manhattan had suffered enough and was finally getting a respite.

Boats and ferries coursed along the water, also casting off light.

I watched as the sky darkened and the Empire State Building began to fade from view. The lamps along the promenade were off, so it was even darker than normal, but there were lots of people milling about, sitting, talking on cell phones. I looked up and I could see the stars.

After staring out romantically into the darkness, I turned around and walked home. I talked to my dad around 10:00. The last he heard from my mom, she’d gotten down to Penn Station in Manhattan, and she’d managed to get on a train, and she was waiting for it to leave so she could go home. That was a couple of hours ago. Her cell phone battery is low, so my dad told her not to call until the train gets to New Jersey so he can pick her up. I hope she’s okay.

Anyway, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, because I was too tired to make anything else. My TV is on, my computer works, I have air conditioning. Life’s not bad. But I kind of feel like I’m missing out on the fun across the river. Dammit, I want to be a real New Yorker already.

Okay, so today wasn’t as exciting as September 11. That’s a good thing. It was only the biggest power failure in 38 years. Didn’t this happen in a movie once? Sneakers, right?

Here are some photos. And here’s the entertaining Metafilter thread. Oh, Metafilter, I love you.

Good night.