Camping at your own place

I had never expected one storm can blow the whole Puget Sound Power supplies for several days. In India, at my place, we used to have power cuts, which at times even used to be 10-12 hours everyday. The conditions used to be bad but no power for 3 consecutive days, I don't think I ever witnessed that.
And in India, we were never so dependent on electricity.
Here we could not cook food (stoves are not electric back in India), the internet stopped working (who cares about that back there :P), even cellphone networks went down (since no commercial organization here think of backup generators/inverters) , no traffic signals (now what's that in Indian context? :P), even gas-stations stop operating, and of course, there you never depend upon the heating systems that much. (although Delhi gets pretty much as cold as Seattle does)

Anyways, the whole incident was more of fun than trouble to me. Gathering food supplies which neither require cooking nor refrigeration, getting wood to burn in fireplace, sleeping in a sleeping bag in your own house, using flashlights, and even checking out hotels in case it becomes the last resort, doesn't it sound like a camping trip. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this "paid Friday vacation". And then, I was one of those fortunate people in whose houses power restored the very next day but I know some of my friends who are still in dark after 3 days of cold and darkness. Unlike me it wasn't (or maybe I should say it isn't) fun for everyone, but hopefully everything should be fine by tomorrow and Pacific NorthWest would be alive once again :)