I RE-enter the 21st century

I don't know if you've heard, but we had some problems in this part of the world last week. A couple of people had power outages, that kind of thing.
Actually, we had a hurricane. This is kind of different for Ohio. Generally, the aftermath of a hurricane brings us lots and lots of rain; Ike brought wind, and plenty of it. Almost no rain. My house was without power from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon, and we were among the ones who got power relatively fast.
I was actually kind of disappointed when the power came on. Things had been kind of relaxed, and I was enjoying the calm, quiet evenings. The younger boys loved having their bedtime stories read by the light of a battery-powered lantern, and with no school in the morning, the reading could go on and on.
I was able to enjoy the lack of electricity only because the weather was pretty mild. If it had been really hot, I'd have done significant amounts of pouting and whining. As it was, only the teenaged ones really suffered- they had no internet access. Oh, and Gregory was distraught about one thing- he had lost his first tooth at school on the Friday before the storm, and forgotten to bring it home. He was frantic. I tried to get him to accept money from me to tide him over until the tooth fairy could visit, or to leave a note explaining to the tooth fairy the usual circumstances, but nothing would do except money left by the tooth fairy in exchange for the actual tooth. Said tooth is, at this moment, tucked under his pillow, awaiting the transfer.
Here are a few things that would not have happened without the windstorm-
1) Jeff would not have gathered load after load of free wood to burn this winter.
2)We would have missed out on three evenings blissfully free of news about the election.
3) We would not have been at the zoo on Thursday. Carrousel rides were free, the animals were active, and we saw Jack Hanna.