3:43 AM

Allow for a moment the possibility that you have planned to wake up at 5 AM tomorrow morning. You've done this because there is an outstanding amount of snow falling to the earth and you know that it will take you at least two hours to get to work the next morning unless you leave by 5:30 or so. Also note - you are doing this, this leaving early thing, even though you know the likelihood that the roads have been plowed is not high. You're willing to accept this risk, these slippery little country roads, because you'd rather be all alone on an icy road than surrounded by idiots on a slightly more stable surface. You do this because you're kind of fucking nuts. Or, for short, Minnesotan.

So...allowing that you are planning on waking up at 5 am for the reasons noted above what would you say is the absolute worst time for your power to fail and for you to wake up freezing? The answer would be 3:43 am. This cannot be disputed. I know because 3:43 am is, of course, when my power went out. Ostensibly this was due to the fucking ice on the fucking power lines but that doesn't really matter at 3:43 am. What matters is wondering how long it will take to come back on (in this case about 4 hours). You wonder if the neighbors have power but have no way of telling because most people aren't up at 3:43 am so you can't see the soft glow of a tv or a hall light from their windows. Your neighbors are dicks.

Around 4:45 am your wife, the Little Lady, decides to take a shower and prepare for her day as if there isn't a new foot of snow on the ground outside. Halfway through her shower the water stops because you have a well and that well runs on a pump and that pump has only so much water pressure built up before it has to start relying on electricity to get it going again. So she does her best to get the soap off and sits in her robe in the candle light and you both wonder what to do about the day.

To most people it's not a big deal to quit on the day and just call in to work. But we're fucking idiots, Minnesotans, so we hem and haw and try to shovel. By the way, the overhead garage door is damnably heavy without electricity to heft it.

So. 3:43 am. The absolute worst time to wake up, statistically speaking, if you were planning on getting up at 5. I don't know what the worst time to wake up is if you have to get up at 6:15 - do your own damn research. You can't relax and just go back to sleep. For one thing it's cold and only getting colder. For another you begin to wonder if the pilot light is out on the furnace and you're trying to soundly sleep over a basement that is slowly becoming a bomb. You wish that you had a fireplace for these sorts of situations. For the heat, not for the sweet ass house bomb thing. Your mind races and you don't sleep.

Later in the day you'll find that the snow is kinda beautiful and the icicles hanging on the house are big ol' salmon filets of winter magic. But at 3:43 am you just wish you lived someplace warm. Like San Diego.