I’m always looking for ways to spice up my life. That, combined with my habit of acting without thinking, resulted in committing myself (and my oh-so-along-for-the-ride boyfriend) to a one-night challenge: living without electricity. No laptops, no lights, no phones (except for Twitter – how else would we live tweet the event?).

We thought we had all the aspects covered – for dinner, we’d pick up a pizza, and we’d light a fire to both entertain us and keep us out of pitch black darkness. We had books to read, and we’d have hours of intelligent, meaningful conversation. Our comments on Twitter themselves would surely make it all worth it, as we’d gain hundreds of top tier celeb followers!

Unfortunately, things started to go wrong before we even arrived at home. Our trusty Loblaws was all out of fire logs, which we use because it’s not like we’re Paul Revere or anything. We could either risk our candles burning out halfway through the night, or we could cancel. Not to be deterred, we headed to our local sketchy convenience store – lo and behold, they had an overpriced firelog! We bought that shiz and lugged it home – nothing could stop us now!

Home at last, we fumbled around the hall trying to find a candle and a match (note to self: next time think this through more carefully). I volunteered to prepare our love nest in front of the fire while the BF went to get the pizza – just because I’d never lit the thing before didn’t mean I couldn’t – right? That’s what Google is for. Except, of course, we couldn’t Google… but really, how hard can it be? A flare of the match later and that thing was up in flames like Sodom and Gomorrah. And the smoke was certainly an indication that I’d done it right. Really right… there was a LOT of smoke. And our smoke alarm is quite sensitive. Separately, those things are fine. Together, they mean me standing on a stool with a cardboard box trying to fan the smoke away after realizing that apparently you’re supposed to open the flue in the chimney to avoid this problem. They also mean your upstairs neighbour will be knocking on your door after hearing your alarm for a solid ten minutes, just to make sure you’re not burning alive. And even more importantly, it means admitting defeat as your boyfriend sees all this going down when he arrives with delicious, delicious pizza (that you’ve now totally earned).

After these two black eyes, we were due for some feathers in our caps. The candles were lit, the fire was no longer smoking like a just-shot gun, and the pizza was being devoured as we toasted our global-warming-preventative selves with wine (red, since the fridge was off-limits, of course).

As we nestled in front of the fire, squinting as we tried to read our classic novels (okay, Shopaholic series and a sports bio), I applauded our efforts to help save the world, be totally hipster, and lower our electricity bill all in one.

But next time, he’s totally lighting the fire.

~ Shannon Mitchell