I didn't sleep well that night, in spite of the fact that the bed there was much more comfortable than my futon at Steve's mom's house. Adrenaline will do that to you - I remember not being able to sleep after Aidan was born, even though I had hardly slept during three nights of labor.

I got up every time Aidan stirred. I was so scared that he would pee on the comforter. Of course he didn't, he was fine, and I should have realized that a peed on comforter would be among the least worrisome things for the hotel staff once the blackout was over.

There was a building that rose up over the hotel that somehow had power. It was completely lit up with florescent tube lights and was incredibly bright. It made me wonder if the stars were spectacular that night, with thousands of light polluters like this one out of commission. I fantasized that people were so moved by the stars that night that they demaded that something be done about light pollution.

When the sky started to get light I decided that I didn't need to pretend to sleep anymore and I got dressed and went to see what the outside world was like. The lobby of the hotel was hot and full of weary people. Some were still asleep - even couples on the floor entwined. A ballroom was filled with groupings of three chairs in a row. This is how people who couldn't get a room or couldn't make it up the stairs to their rooms had slept. Or hadn't.

I took a walk to Grand Central. I asked a man sweeping outside of a deli if they would be open that day. He said no - but it seemed like he thought I was asking if he was open right then. The streets were a modest mess. The night before, bars had been open and the crowds drinking on the streets were like New Orleans. Later I spoke to a man who was considering a move to New York. "Doesn't the blackout make you want to reconsider?". He said that he'd been in Times Square all night and that he had a great time.

I walked past the Yale Club which seemed like it was functioning. All of the beautiful windows on the second floor were thrown open. I think that's the library and I wondered if it was full of Yale Clubbers sleeping on chairs and the floor.

Grand Central Station was quite empty. There were a few desprate looking people filing in as I entered. I asked two separate people if they were expecting the trains to start running. Both of them said in a similar hopeless way that they had no idea. I guess that they had no place else to go. It was hot in there and the floor is hard. It certainly wasn't a pleasant place to wait around.

I walked back to the hotel and was noticing that there were these bus stops on Madison that would take people to places like Co-op City and City Island for $4. Nothing that I could see in Brooklyn or Queens though. I went back into the hotel and a man (the manager perhaps - he had no tag) was briefing a small crowd of people on what he knew of the situation. He told us that electricity was already coming back on in some parts of the city, but there were no assurances that we would have electricity soon or even that day. He disclosed that they were going to serve a sort of a breakfast brunch for hotel guests later that morning. I was terribly happy to hear this.

I went back to the room for a little while until they announced (there was a speaker in the hallway) that a "limited" breakfast was being served. Aidan was still asleep, so Mom stayed with him and I ventured down with a large plastic bag to bring back provisions for the family. The night before I had imagined that the power came on in the night and we had a room service pancake feast in the morning. Generally, I'm not that keen on hotel food, but hotel pancakes always have malt or something in the batter and they are the best. Obviously, they were not serving pancakes. There was melon and pineapple, bread, english muffins, bagels, cream cheese, butter and jelly. There were individual boxes of cereal, and danishes and muffins, cut into bite sized pieces. There were plates of sliced up cucumber and tomato. I don't know if everyone there felt as lucky as I did, since they were actually paying for their hotel rooms. I ate myself some fruit, sucked down a cup of orange juice and stocked up on dry goods to bring back to the room.

My mom made the trip down and while she was gone, Aidan woke up. He said he wanted cereal, so we ventured down when she came back. I brought a bowl and a box of cereal down that I had picked up earlier so that all we would need was milk and it was a good thing because milk was about all that was left. We went into the ballroom for him to eat at the tables that they had set up in there and I noticed that the lights were on and things almost felt normal.

Our next adventure was down to the phone banks on the second floor to call Steve since the cell phone batteries were almost dead. Aidan made friends with a hotel employee who was sitting there holding flashlights for people because there were no lights by the phone banks. She was usually a meeting planner. She let him hold a small flashlight and he was thrilled. People were trying to call airlines to figure out flight information. Many did not speak English well. I called Steve's mom's house collect 3 times and noone answered. It was between 9 and 10 o'clock. I was puzzled and later realized that everyone was sleeping. Steve will get heckled for that for a long time.

The next order of business was using the bathroom. Toilets were no longer flushing and there were things that we didn't think we wanted hanging around in the tiny hotel room for god knows how long. I hunted down a public bathroom with windows so that I could see. We weren't the only ones with this idea. I will always wonder who cleaned out those toilets when it was all over - and how they did it.

I thought that we'd just hang out indefinitely in the room at that point. I couldn't get in touch with Steve and had found no transportation to Long Island or even Queens. Then, another hallway announcement: the hotel had two busses, one going to JFK and the other to LaGuardia. They were first come, first serve. I was a little apathetic about it at first. We weren't even legitimate hotel guests, would they even let us on?

Well they did, and there were so few people on the busses that they held them over for another hour. Eventually, we were off and we could see that only a few blocks away the traffic lights would be on, and then off again another few blocks. There was a lot of traffic, especially outside of Manhattan and the driver liked to accelerate and brake hard. I started to crash. I was hot even though the bus was air conditioned. I asked the lady next to me if she was hot - she wasn't. That's when I realized that I was getting carsick. Eventually I decided that I had to get to the bathroom and I asked Aidan to promise me he would stay sitting in his seat. He had to pee and insisted on coming with me. As soon as I got the bathroom door closed I puked and puked and puked. Poor Aidan was standing there in the tiny bathroom on the moving bus watching me from up close. Then I had to help him pee. He was a champ. After that, I felt like I could do anything. When we got back to our seats, he announced to everyone that I had thrown up.

We pulled up to the American Airlines terminal soon after that and a woman who worked at the airport came up to the bus and insisted that no one get off and that we all go back to where we came from because the airport had no electricity, there were no flights, no ammenities, no air conditioning, and no place for people to go. Aidan and I snuck off of the bus in the chaos that ensued. I could hear the bus driver saying that he wasn't going to go back to the hotel. I have no idea what happened to all of those people.

The inside of the airport was miserable. The New York airports are always awful, even when the electricity is on. We waited half an hour to get a pay phone to call Steve during which time I heard person after person being told that they couldn't get flights until Sunday. These people were camped out in the hot airport, many with children. Thursday through Sunday. The blackout was a nightmare for them.

Steve came, we drove home through areas that still had no traffic lights. A lot of the traffic was from the long lines for the gas stations. That seemed so weird to me - why did everyone need gas - couldn't people just stay home for one day? I felt crazy that night - tired but couldn't sleep, writing this blog entry in my head.