The other night some SUV jockey creamed the post down the street from my house and brought the wires down on the road. When I woke up in the morning there was frozen condensation on the ceiling and the cat was sprawled across me, like I was a subway grating.

In the big picture, it's scary to know how vulnerable we are on the grid. Some guy in Tonawanda shoots out a street light and for the next week, half the microwaves in North America are blinking OO:OO. It's like a warning from the Other Side. "Oh, oh! : Oh, oh!" the green LED is shrieking. "You think this is bad-wait till the really, really big one hits!"

And what if Homer Simpson really is weighing the heavy water with bathroom scales. Or Bin the Beard is posing as a lineman, rerouting all the wires to Inuvik.

The thing that really scares me is that I don't really have a plan. Sure I've got a fresh tank for the barbecue and a few cans of Chef Boyardee in the cupboard. We'll fill the tub, get out the blankets and eat all the fish sticks and ice cream before they thaw.

We can only hope that the government will be covering the big stuff, like keeping the food coming. Although that's going to be a big stretch, considering that everything we eat these days seems to come from California or China.

Back in the summer, when the northeast went black, we got a taste of what it was like to be next door to the Center of the Empire-when the High Teck Masters of the Universe bit the big one. Made you wish you were living in Quebec, eh!

When the lights went out we were camping in a Provincial Park, so we didn't know there was a problem until the park wardens went to orange alert and shut down all the public toilets. You were watching your step in the woods for the next few days.

A funny thing happened though. We started talking to the people in the next campsite-that nervous sort of standing around a car wreck camaraderie that surfaces when something shakes your normal world. We started coalescing at one campsite. People brought over wood and beer, and before you know it we had a party.

We still keep in touch with some of them. Phill and Sally McGrooder sent us a Christmas Card. The Phillips had their baby and Tommy Micheal got his braces off a couple of weeks ago. We're planning a reunion next summer but the kids say they're bringing extra batteries for their Games.

We cooked supper over an open fire, and back in the city friends say they barbecued or ate cold sandwiches. One young couple have a date happily circled on the calendar, eight months from the black out.

Normally in the city, I try hard not to get too close to my neighbors. I'm civil and helpful. It's just I know my history. Somehow I always manage to sabotage relationships, and I'd sooner not become enemies with someone across the fence. So I treat them like relatives and keep some distance.

The other day I had an epiphany around the whole subject of survival. A friend had just bought a 4 million square inch, state of the art, digital, Dolby, plasma, rock your socks off 'home entertainment system'. So we christened it with a night of favorite flixs and popcorn.

We were watching Tom Hanks in Apollo 13. You know the picture where NASA spends enough money to feed all the kids in the world, so three guys can joy ride to the moon and back.

Their ship malfunctions, the heats off and the boys are looking at the Big Deep Freeze. All that high teck whiz-bang equipment and nobody thought to pack sweaters.

The Astronauts are sitting in their capsule, teeth chattering arms wrapped around themselves and fingers stuck in their pits. From the front of the room I hear somebody's kid pipe up. "How come they don't huddle up and keep each other warm like hamsters?"

You could literally feel the lights go on in all the big people's heads. They knew why. Cause real men in the 60's didnt change diapers and they didn't huddle up. The autopsy report read: death by homophobia.

So we've got a plan now for when something major finally comes down the chute. Forget the cowboy crap-the every man for himself looser talk. Next time the lights go out we're inviting the neighbors over to share the fireplace.

If they bring something to eat fine. I know this much, no matter how bad things get, the more heads and hearts working on a solution, the easier any hard time will be.

XXX