Olden Times Must Have Sucked

And by olden times, I mean 20 years ago when homes didn't have internet.

Last night during our power outage (rain, falling trees, trees hit power lines (which I have no idea why they build UNDER trees), power goes out, children sweat in bed while eating low-fat Carvel), devoted partner and I had one of those senseless factual disagreements that, during times of peak power performance, are solved in a matter of moments. I said that a 'ger' was the Mongolian tent, he said it was a 'yurt.' Obviously this was influenced by a conversation about the travels of Edney. Devoted partner said he had never heard of this 'ger' I mentioned, which I thought odd since devoted partner has heard of EVERYTHING. And, because of the lack of power, we had to wait until morning to discover which of us was right. For the other geeks out there, we both were: yurt is the generic name of the structure; ger is what the Mongolians call yurts.

And, dear readers, this sort of thing happens a lot. Especially on long car trips, of which we will be taking a couple in the next several weeks. Devoted partner's blackberry gets sporadic reception in the middle of Manhattan, so I am not sure it can be relied upon to solve epic disagreements about vocabulary or the proper way to address an admiral on shore in the midst of moose and/or banjo country, and my iToy is a) mostly broken (unless you don't think using 1/3 of the screen where the keyboard sits is a problem) and b) only wi-fi anyway, making it useless in the aforementioned places.

I know the lore is that the Guinness Book of World Records was started so that bar fights could be settled quickly and unequivocally, but it's a pretty bulky book that has become so milquetoast in recent years, that it hardly qualifies as even vaguely interesting. I'm starting to wonder if the only solution is silence in the car and/or Harry Potter books on tape (how can you argue facts when you're listening to a book of total fabrication?).

In the meantime, I can be cheerful because power was restored at 6:00am this morning, necessitating only one night in the damp hot dark.