"It's like Little House on the Prairie, but with ice!"

yesterday at approx. 10:20, we lost power at work. this meant no lights, no ovens, no refrigerator, no microwave, no coffe machine, no dish machine, and no hot water. (the ice machine, however, is on the generator, so at least we had ice. *eyeroll*)
the meatballs had been put in the oven at 7:30, so they were warm enough, so we put them on bread (no water for mashed potatoes), and gave them coleslaw. (they just had to go without the second choice, which would've been made at the last minute.) thankfully, for supper they were having egg salad sandwiches (the egg salad was done) and chicken rice soup. the soup would have to be foregone, but later on they found a fish fryer that runs on propane, so they could heat up campbell's chicken noodle. sadly, the garbage disposal was out, so we couldn't dump the chicken rice soup, and of course, with no dish machine, the pots and pans started piling up. i told the night crew to call me if the electricity was still out when they left, so i could come in early today to do the dishes. they called me at 5:15 and said they were cleaning up (supper is usually at 5:30), i asked how that worked, and they said they had served at 4:30 since the dining room was fast losing light. there was still no electricity, so i would have to go in early.
this morning, when i got there, i was greeted by the sound of the generator and a lack of light. i zoomed into the building and found the cook and asked what the heck we were supposed to do now. 'i don't know. in 22 years we've never had anything like this happen.' ok then.
so cold cereal it was. (the walk-in refrigerator was cool enough that the milk was okay.) there is an emergency outlet that's not very strong, but it was enough to make toast and for him to puree the food for those who needed it (in the blender that was just getting rinsed with cold water between each use). the administrator and the cook went to mcdonald's to buy tons of coffee from a bunch of bewildered mickeyd's employees, and we went with that.
before that, however, the cook and i had the enjoyable task of getting rid of the chicken rice soup from the day before. it smelled so strong we couldn't stand it being in the kitchen anymore. and that was with the cover on. so we took the pot outside to dump the soup into a plastic bag and throw it in the dumpster. the cook took the cover off. we both ran away and almost hurled. you could smell it 20 feet away (and probably farther). we tried to get close enough again to do it. we both ran away and almost hurled. i have never in my life smelled anything more revolting. finally he got tough enough to go over and dump it. he grabbed the pot to bring it back inside. 'no! leave it out here! no one's going to steal it and we can at least air it out for awhile. that pot smells so horrible and we can't wash it. leave it!' so we did.
9:30 - still no electricity. no roast pork and green bean casserole. the walk-in freezer was cool enough, though, that we were able to grill (in the flurries) hamburgers, and the administrator and i ran to target to pick up chips and pop to go with it. (after all, we could put the pop on ice.) 'how many bags of chips do we need?' she asked me. 'when we used to have them on the menu we went through about 3 bags, so 3 or 4.' she bought 9. why does no one listen to me?
when we came back from the store at about 11:00, i walked through the kitchen and there was a horrible smell. i told the cook. 'ha. i just brought the pot in. i didn't want it near the grill.' lovely.
for supper, they're ordering pizza. after lunch, a church came by with coffee for us. a visitor volunteered to go to her church and bake brownies if we needed (we had frozen cookies we could use for coffeetime this afternoon, though). it was very nice of them both.
when we left at 2:00 today, there was still no electricity. the electric company said it could be 11:00 tonight before we get it. i once again told the night staff to let me know if i need to go in early to do dishes tomorrow. hopefully i won't have to, and if i have to, hopefully i'm able to this time. otherwise we're pretty much screwed for tomorrow.