By: Danielle Ulman and Liz Farmer

As two Montgomery County residents who commute to Baltimore daily, we’ve attacked this week’s power outages in different ways.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re both steaming about Pepco’s slow return to service, but knowing their business a bit — and seeing all of the damage from the storm’s downed trees — has helped take off the edge.

So has working with A/C in Baltimore.

Here’s this week from each of our points of view.

Liz:
Yesterday, I posted this status on Facebook: “Approaching day three of no power … since it went off Sunday afternoon we’ve turned our freezer into an icebox, dug out the lantern and candles, and at night when it’s dark we sit around the dim light just chatting about our days. It’s definitely 1875 in the Bedard/Farmer household ….”

To which my brother-in-law smartly pointed out, “They had [Facebook] in 1875, Liz?”

Touché.

But seriously, it’s been an interesting three (approaching four) days without electricity in our household –- and not as bad as you might think. The upside is we’re saving money on our electricity bill. The downside is we’re probably giving all those savings to Dunkin’ Donuts (coffee in the morning is a MUST) and the grocery stores we’re buying our ready-made meals at.

It’s a little strange driving up to Baltimore every morning from Rockville and spending my days in a world where the Internet works, light switches are taken for granted and you don’t have to worry about where you last left the flashlight. Sure, I was a little jealous of my friends who work near their homes and got Monday and Tuesday off because their offices don’t have power. But on the plus-side that means I get to come into work and obsessively check Pepco’s website for power restoration updates.

When I go home at night my usual routine of watching too much television (which I justify by telling myself I exert a lot of brain cells every day at my job) and satisfying my sweet tooth with a cup of hot chocolate has been replaced with chatting with my husband by candle light about our days and eating a couple marshmallows. I’ve missed the season premiere of “Mad Men,” have episodes of “Entourage” and “Top Chef” to catch up on and have no idea what’s happening in the big wide world after 7 p.m.

But surprisingly, that doesn’t bother me one bit. I guess there’s something to be said for the simpler life in Rockville. As long, of course, as the complicated life still exists for me up here in Baltimore –- I can handle 1875 for part of my day but I’m not about to jump ship from the 21st century just yet.

Danielle:
It’s been three days since the power went out at my Bethesda home, and I’ve spent less than 12 hours there. Our house was hot, most of our food went bad and I decided after a night of sleeping in our basement spare bedroom that I needed to get back to civilization (read: my folks’ house in Baltimore County).

It’s not that I couldn’t handle the heat or the quaint feeling of life without TV or the Internet. No, it was more about not being able to dry my hair. It’s not that I’m vain, but it would be pretty unprofessional to go three days without washing my hair — not to mention, potentially offensive to my co-workers.

Not wanting to stay by himself with nothing to do, nothing to eat and no one to talk to, my husband made the trek from Bethesda to Baltimore at 5:30 p.m. on Monday with the rest of the unlucky people that make that ghastly commute daily. With him came the food we managed to salvage on ice.

No power Tuesday meant another night with my folks. Staying in Baltimore for the last two nights hasn’t been bad, but it’s not home. My husband’s regular round-trip commute went from 30 minutes to 3 hours. Bonus for me — my commute was slashed from at least 2 hours a day to about 45 minutes.

Pepco has said our power will return by tonight at 11:30 p.m. I’m not holding my breath, but regardless of our power situation, we’re going home tonight. I think our Baltimore “roommates” will be ready to get rid of us, not to mention all of our food crowding their refrigerator. And, well, we ran out of clean clothes.

Here’s hoping both of us can blow dry our hair tomorrow — at home.