I had just flown to Michigan for a High School reunion. My dad stopped by the barber shop on the way back from the airport. Halfway through this haircut, the power went out. The barber finished without clippers, by the light coming in from the windows. As we made our way home a couple of miles, we kept thinking "oh wow, this is a little bigger than just that neighborhood". It wasn't for another hour or so that we realized how widespread the outage was. Fun nerd fact - At the time, I still had a back-end dial-up ISP number I could use. I dialed in to get online, and shared my connection over wifi so my brother could be online too. There we were, a couple of nerds, checking slashdot and sending IMs by candlelight on our laptops as long as the batteries lasted. Our power didn't come back on for three days... just in time for the reunion.