Photo by Audrey Davis of Audrey Davis Photography. Hire her, will ya?

When you live in a neighborhood that frequently loses power--perhaps it's the trees that give me joy except when they're giving me allergies--you learn to keep candles.

For me, the power going out is the equivalent to a time warp. Like in the days before refrigerators and microwaves, I can only eat what can be consumed uncooked from the pantry. Like in the days before air conditioning, I must open the window for breeze. Like in the days before e-readers, I'm bound to reading things printed. And the story doesn't stop just because the power goes out.

Photo by Audrey Davis of Audrey Davis Photography. I can vouch for her awesomeness, and not just because she's my roommate.

While the battery life on my Nook is such that I only need to charge it once a month, power outages don't often keep me from reading, even in electronic format. But there's something whimsical, magical even, about reading a print book by candlelight.

Photo by Audrey Davis of Audrey Davis Photography. You should totally commission her for portraits. I mean, if she can shoot pics this awesome on the fly when the power is out and in crappy lighting, you know she's got talent.

It's a book seance, in a sense. This is how things must have been in the days before electricity, in the days when "technology" made life easier by way of hand pumps and pulleys. It's a reminder to appreciate the simple pleasures of life--a reminder that while technology makes reading easier and more convenient, the absence of it can't get in the way of a good story.