Blackout!

The night I came back from Wisconsin I had the unpleasant surprise of finding that the electricity in the entire neighborhood was killed! Well, I have been in power outages before, so I assumed the power would come back shortly. Ha! After spending the entire night in complete and utter darkness I learned from my landlady that the authorities say it would take "several days" to fix the problem. I don't quite understand why it has to be so slow. Clearly, in a gritted city like Chicago (and its suburb Oak Park, my current home), a power outage in a well-defined area indicates a problem in the feed into that area. That junction should be quickly found, shouldn't it? We have been without power now for more than 24 hours, and a remedy is not in sight. For some reason the German saying, "sich schwarz ärgern" comes to my mind, meaning "to turn black in anger". No light, no cooking, no fridge/freezer, no laundry, no TV, no internet (I"m so desperate that I am writing this in the lab at 8 pm on a Saturday) - even our water is heated electrically! So in order to kill some time I decided to go and see a movie, but there was none I would have liked. Remember, I couldn't check the shows online, so I only found out in front of the theater, which is 40 min walking from my home. And then, on the way home, disappointment was joined by humiliation, because the storm that had killed our power decided to return and make me soaking wet. I''l keep you posted.
Update: After a total of about 25 hours the power finally came back.