It's time again for my world famous weekly thought. The place where I tell you everything that is going on in my head and stuff thats happening with me.

cK's BLACKOUT Experience
Where were you when the lights went out? Were you left in the pitch black dark like I was, or were you not even in the affected area? Well, wherever you where, you did know about the biggest power outage in US History. Over 50 million people were without power. I was in New York City at the time and was actually just about to get on a bus to head to the subway so I can get on over to the Bronx. It was a good thing that I took my sweet time at the house and the power went off before I could leave. I was in my room making my hair all pretty, listening to the radio when the light went half power.. (like a brownout) and the music on my radio stopped, but the radio was clearly still on. I didn't think anything of it and went down to the laundry room to get some of my shirts out of the dryer. When I was down there. I noticed that the lights were completely out. I figured it was be back on in like 5 minutes. We had this all the time living in Florida. But after a while, nothing. The microwave clocks were still off, the fridges stopped and everything was quiet. The phone rang and it was my cousin's boyfriend calling from Manhattan to see if we had any power. We said nope. He told us that his office is running on backup generators and that the power is out all the way up to Connecticut. This was a little odd. So I go outside and I see one of our neighbours, they asked me if our power was out too, and I told them it was out everywhere. My little cousins never been through a blackout before and it was funny watching them try to figure out why the microwave, toaster, and electric can opener wouldn't work. We got our battery operated radio to listen to any updates on the power outage and at that time, they still had no idea what happened. Only speculation that it was somewhere in the Niagara / Mohawk power grid. It was getting really hot indoors with the air conditioners not working, so I took the kids outside so we could take a walk in the open air. While walking, I took some pictures:

Traffic Light Out	Intersections With No Lights	McDonald's Closed

The first picture there I took was how the traffic lights were out. This led to traffic chaos. There were no police directing traffic at the intersections because they were all dispatched to more serious locations. Regular citizens had to take it upon themselves to direct traffic. We walked by the 7-Eleven, the Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonald's and they were all closed. It was very disappointing... I walked back with the kids and we crossed this park that had a boating dock. We spent time seeing who could throw the farthest rock. We later returned back to the house as the sun began to set. We got back to the house and lit candles so we could see our way around. My aunt called and told me that she was stuck in Manhattan, she wasn't going to even bother trying to make it back to Long Island and go spend the night by my uncle in the Bronx. My cousin, Jazmine, however, was stuck on a subway train to Brooklyn. We were waiting for her to call us back and tell us where she was. But with all the cell phones down, that was near to impossible unless she had a quarter to call from a payphone. So we had to wait until she found a way to contact us.

As for me and my little cousins, we managed well. My other cousin, Rosi, hung out with us since her apartment is so dark and humid. It was better to be with people than be alone in this darkness. We went outside with our flashlights for a little bit to actually look at the sky. You could actually see the stars! You could never see that here before. We spent time gazing up and trying to pick out the constellations. We met Tony and Serena who invited us to chill out on their open air patio. We played cards, jenga and listened to the radio for updates. The night went on... until we were all finding ourselves falling asleep on the patio. Until, at 12:30am, the lights came back on. We all celebrated and went to plug back in the fridges that we disconnected earlier in case of a surge.

The next day, all we could talk about was, "Where were you when the lights went out?" My cousin Jazmine did make it home, read her version of getting stuck in a subway tunnel here.

Thanks to Shea Stadium and the NY METS for welcoming me

cK Goes To His FIRST NY METS GAME
My little cousins got free tickets from their school to go to a New York Mets game. Apparently they had an extra one... who else to go with them than their favourite cousin, cK? So I have never been to one before. This was my first time in Shea Stadium. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Spending so much time in the Bronx, you are kind of very pro-Yankees. (everyone should be) I almost felt ashamed to be at a Mets game. But it was all good. I didn't pay for the ticket. Iif I did, then I could see where I would be I should rightfully hang my head in shame. Lucky for me, it wasn't just any other day at the park. It just happened to be Italian Day at Shea Stadium. So every inning and whenever there was a break in the play, they would put up some random Italian fact on the big screen. Interesting to know, like Guglielmo Marconi was Italian and invented the radio. That's cool. There were more, but I was distracted by the plethora of Italian women that surrounded me in the stands. When Mike Piazza got up to bat, forget it! The place went nuts! Literally deafening! All the women were drooling and cheering for their Italian NY METS superstar. The following pic is a shot from where I was sitting. I think I had a great view. I actually like being high up, I don't like being all tight and crowded in those lower levels. I need my space! Shea Stadium is a nice park. Behind the score signs you can see the subway trains roll by and the planes landing into LaGuardia Airport. It baffles me that New York is just so big that it can have 2 very different major league baseball teams, in the same city! The last time I was at a baseball game was in Toronto with n8. You know, come to think about it, that game was exactly a year ago this week. You can read about that here.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at: crazykelvin@hotmail.com