Around 4 p.m. there was that pop and a low buzz as every appliance and light bulb in my neighborhood shut down, followed immediately by silence. It happens occasionally (remember rolling black-outs?), so I told the girls to wait a minute to see if the power would come back on.

Nada. My laptop still had power, but with the wifi down, I couldn’t get online. My iphone said I was connected to the 3G network, but it wouldn’t connect to anything. I couldn’t even pull up Twitter or Facebook. It might as well have been the apocalypse, people!

Tried to text, but the service was sluggish. Power outage or not, it was time for piano. Except that the car was in the garage … with an electric garage door opener. There’s a manual failsafe in there for emergencies, but no way was I going to mess with that with two little kids in tow unless absolutely necessary. Piano was out.

Finally got a hold of my husband at work, who informed that power was pretty much down in all of San Diego, and a few other areas in southern California, as well as parts of Arizona and even Mexico. Since it wasn’t looking like the power would be back anytime soon, he shut the office down and hit the road. It took over an hour for him to make the normally 25 minute commute.

Anyway, we all eventually made it home, and I hand washed some dishes and made dinner on our gas stove, while frantically checking my phone for internet connectivity every 4 minutes. I don’t have a disease, I swear. I just like being connected. I can put the Internet away, so long as I know it’s there if I need it.

Once I gave up and tried to enjoy the Amishness of the situation, we had a pretty nice evening. After our candlelit dinner, we took the girlies for a walk to see the stars. I even broke out some glow sticks for them, which they thought were the greatest things ever.

We tucked them into bed together so they wouldn’t be afraid of the dark, and then we played gin rummy and chatted and tried not to sweat in our un-air conditioned home. Eventually we went to bed too, and it’s amazing what kinds of things you can find to do when there’s no laptop or TV to distract a happily married couple…

Overall, I’m glad we had the excuse to take a little break from our electrified life, but I won’t lie. When the house hummed back to life a little after midnight, I shed a little tear of happiness. And then I said hi to Twitter.

And all was right in the my world.

So go click my links (my editors like web traffic, yo!) and maybe even give my articles a glance. You might even learn something! I know I did writing them.

Just after Governor Rick Perry announced his run for the presidency, I wrote about his jobs record in Texas. Spoiler alert: It’s better than Obama’s.

I wrote about the truth behind those ‘budget cuts’ we keep hearing about. They aren’t cuts at all. They’re an increase in spending. Only in Washington … sigh.

I never thought about this problem before, but how do women get bras in Saudi Arabia? They’re not allowed to work, and men aren’t allowed to fit them. My breasts salute America!

We need Social Security reform. The Ponzi scheme is going to collapse, and soon.

In Idaho, a man is being prosecuted for killing a grizzly bear that was on his property. The bear was approaching his family, which includes six children, aged 10 months to 14 years. Bottom line: People > Bears.

Environmentalists are now going after our clean clothes. Leave my fabric softener alone!

Happy reading!

Now what were you saying?

In between choruses of “I’m hungry!” and breaking up fights and swimming and paying bills and visiting with adorable chubby babies, I wrote some stuff. You should totally read it. In the words of Thing 2, “Cuz I say so.”

I really have no idea where she gets it.

Do you know how much oil we’re sitting on in the U.S? A lot. Way more than Saudi Arabia. You know what would be cool? Creating nearly a million American jobs and lowering the cost of fuel. Drill, baby, drill.

Was it a corporate jet? Was it an ATM? Nope, it was Obamacare that killed the economy. I wonder if there was a death panel involved…

Shared sacrifice my hiney. If I hear President Obama say one more time that ‘the rich’ have to pay their fair share, I will scream. Or at least tweet about it. Because Dude? You know what’s not fair? That fact that half the population pays nothing.

That’s the roundup! Have a great week, you guys.

What happens without proper auto maintenance.

Inflate your tires to the proper levels. When your tires are properly inflated, you will get better mileage and therefore save money buy having to purchase less $4/gallon gasoline. Plus you’ll be saving America from spending money on foreign oil AND you’ll be saving the planet, because there’s nothing polar bears hate more than gasoline fumes.

Hahahaha! Sometimes I really crack myself up.

But seriously, proper auto maintenance is key to keeping your finances in order. Without regular oil changes and tune-ups, your car will end up needing some major (and expensive) repairs. It’s not a gamble — it’s a certainty. Your vehicle is a complicated piece of machinery, and it needs clean oil and filters and regular inspections to avoid running into big problems like your head gasket busting. I don’t even know what that means, except that it happened to me once when I was 17 and stoopid and didn’t think to keep an eye on the engine temp gauge.

Which reminds me … keep an eye on your dashboard indicators! First of all, make sure you’re not breaking the speed limit, because tickets are expensive, and you can’t always talk your way out of them. Also look at the ones having to do with engine temperature. If it goes over into the red Danger Zone, for the love of your car, pull over, Silly! Then whip out your cell phone and call AAA or someone that knows more about engines than you do and ask them what you should do.

Another easy way to save money in the garage is to wash your car yourself. Duh, doing anything yourself is cheaper than paying someone else to do it – it only costs elbow grease. If you have kids, put them to work. They want a ride to soccer practice? They can contribute by helping sudsing up the taxicab minivan. All’s fair in love and war, and parenthood is definitely both.

When you do take your car in, do a little bit of research first. Google your car’s make and model and find out what some common repairs are and what you can expect to pay. Fifteen minutes online could save you hundreds at the mechanics. There is a TON of information out there, and in this case, knowledge is money saved.

I would love to hear more money-saving tips for cars – leave ‘em in the comments if you have some.

Update: Flyover Country has some great suggestions, inspired by this post. I inspire people! Who knew? Click here.

The supply of oil (relative to the demand) has dwindled; therefore the cost of it has gone up. Since the United States is sitting onvast untapped oil reserves, it would only make sense that we tap those. It could take up to ten years for us to see that oil in production, which causes many people to overlook our own resources as a potential solution to our supply problems.

Too bad our politicians thought that would take too long in 1996.That oil would be in our cars at this moment, and maybe gas wouldn’t cost over $4 a gallon.

Instead of trying to fix the supply and demand problem with more supply, the government seems keen on lessening our demand. The latest idea out of the Department of Transportation is to levy a tax on everyone based on the number of miles that they drive.

Read the rest at The Stir

People buy hybrid or electric cars for one of two reasons: To save money or to appear cool. People that actually want to save the planet ride bikes, not drive coal-powered cars.

To the hipsters, a tax on electric vehicles might not be a huge issue. These people might even feel that paying higher taxes for the privilege of driving a Prius makes them even cooler.

Read the rest at The Stir

Anyway, at $4.05 a gallon, I got about 18 1/2 gallons for my $75. Hopefully it will last more than a week, because $300 a month to spend on gas for my car alone is not exactly in our budget.

On my way home, I swung through the McDonald’s drive-thru for a 42 oz. Diet Coke. We’re out of Coke Zero at home and I wasn’t up for the after-work rush at the grocery store. Plus I have other things I need to get at the store, and if I went for soda, I’d feel too guilty to not do the rest of my shopping too. Besides, McDonald’s has an excellent deal on their 42 oz. sodas — only $1.09!

I like math, so I decided to compare the cost of my car’s fuel with my own fuel. The gasoline works out to 3.16 cents per oz, and the Diet Coke was 2.59 cents per oz. Which means that the stuff I put in my car costs about 22% more than the stuff I put in my body.

Car food is more expensive than people food. Go figure.

We don’t have room in our budget to increase the amount of money we spend on gas, so this means we’ll be doing a lot less driving. Fewer trips to visit friends in neighboring cities, no running back to the store for that one thing we forgot, and definitely no drives through the countryside.

I’ve had to do a lot of economizing in the kitchen too, as the price of food has been going up and up. The First Lady likes to tout the benefits of organic rabbit food (which, by the way, children would rather throw away than eat), but she’s not the one trying to pay for it on a modest salary.

Organic farming is much more expensive than farming with pesticides. Without pesticides, there’s nothing to kill the hungry bugs in the fields, which means that actual people need to be employed to keep the produce from being chomped to the vine by the creepy-crawlers. Employing people to care for the plants in organic farms is much more expensive than hiring a crop-duster once or twice a season.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the cost of organic food, but all food that has climbed in recent months and years. In fact, food prices rose more last month than they have in 36 years.

Read the rest at The Stir

People were waiting for half an hour or more to pay $3.75 per gallon of gas. I just hope they weren’t letting their engines idle — that sort of defeats the purpose. By the time we waded through the crowd in the warehouse store with our 12-pack of chicken breasts and so-cute-we-had-to-buy-them matching pajamas for the girls and were on our way home, the price of unleaded had gone up to $3.77.

Supply, demand, and speculation over the woes in the Middle East have contributed to some pretty pricey gasoline. Let’s face it: There’s a limited amount of oil in the world, more countries are developing industrially, and the place most everyone gets their oil from is, for better or worse, in the midst of a revolution.

Of course the cost of energy is going to go up. It’s written in The Law of Common Sense, right in between “what goes up must come down,” and “never stare down the barrel of a shotgun.” (You can find this book in the ‘Welcome Newbies’ section of the Republican bookstore, along with Facts Are Not Hard and A Convenient Truth.)

Read more at The Stir