I’m sitting in a dark apartment after a newly lifted tornado warning and all I have is a tiny flashlight and no power. I’m at an utter loss as to how I’m going to entertain myself with no electricity.

Times like these remind me why I was not born on the prairie. I’m a pop culture addict with a Nook that’s out of battery and a laptop with one hour of battery, but no Internet connection and tons of Netflix shows to watch to kill time but no way to watch them.

This might shock you, but I’m no fan of “Survivor.” I don’t want to be out in the wild with no “Dr. Who” to watch while I eat dinner. And I’d prefer my dinner was already skinned and cooked before I see it, thank you very much.

If the power doesn’t come back on tonight, I’m thinking of some ways to make the time pass by.

1. Gather all of the tenants in my apartment complex and act out “Game of Thrones.” I will decline to play Eddard Stark as I don’t feel like being decapitated, but I am willing to play spunky and athletic Arya Stark. Don’t ask my to play Sansa. Ever. Maybe we’ll get through two or three books by the time the power returns — or maybe their suspicions will be confirmed that I am the weird one in the building. Considering I wore my Darth Vader T-shirt down to the basement during the tornado warning, I’m guessing they already know.
2. Reorganize my DVDs. Forget alphabetical order. I’ll attempt to arrange my DVDs in hierarchy of awesomeness. I’ll develop a point system based on most excellent plot, best mysteries and hottest guys.
3. Pop culture workout. I’ll do a pushup for every “Lord of the Rings” character I can name and two crunches for every line from the movie I can recite. Then, just for kicks, I’ll turn my apartment into an Orc battlefield and save Middle Earth. Again, sorry neighbors. This is what happens when Mother Nature interferes with my pop culture intake.

— Brenna McDermott

I don’t think I ever divulged my “Lord of the Rings” nerdiness to my parents until the day they said they wanted to rent “The Hobbit.”

Sure, they knew I enjoyed the LOTR film trilogy. I do not think they knew, however, that I’d read all the books and knew the lines to the films by heart. There is not a single situation in life that could not be improved with an LOTR quote. Do you feel like you’re moving through life with no direction? “Not all those who wander are lost.” Craving a little bit of that other white meat? “The salty pork is particularly good.” See what I mean?

So I got overexcited when they hadn’t seen the 2013 film yet when I was home for a visit. Watch this amazing three-hour movie — again? You bet!

Sure, they wanted to see the movie. But I don’t think they wanted to see the many YouTube videos I insisted they sit through before sitting down to this marathon of a movie. They didn’t giggle with glee at “They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard” the way I do each time I hear the compilation.

“They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard-gard-gard-ga-ga-ga-gard!” No, they didn’t really get that. They seemed bored with my daily rehearsed Smeagol/Gollum voice. And by the time I started singing the songs from “The Hobbit.” I think they were seriously reconsidering parental rights.

But watch the film we did, and in the end, my stepdad Tim said, “Well … what happens next?” in a frustrated voice. I then informed him he had two more films to find out … but he had to wait a few more months for the next installment. The genuine interest in his voice was all the enthusiasm I needed to break into another round of Gollum impressions. I have to keep them primed for the next film. They might never join the fandom, but they’ll at least put up with my obsession. What more can you ask of family? And I consider it my duty as a daughter to force awesome things upon them — and hope that they’ll be humming along to at least one of my Dwarf songs.

— Brenna McDermott

I assume celebrities sometimes get recognized when they’re in the bathroom of some swanky restaurant. Miss People’s-Choice-Award-Winner washes her hands and looks up at the mirror to see three grown women gawking at her. That sounds like a terrible experience when it happens to you every time you have to go to the bathroom.

But when it happens to you once, it is awesome. I kind of had that exact same reputation in college — for my karaoke skills. And by skills, I mean my drive to sing songs in front of people no matter how bad I sounded or how much they wanted me to get off stage.

I was washing my hands at one of my favorite college bars when I heard someone say, “You’re that karaoke girl. You sing ‘Bennie and the Jets,’ right?” I swelled with pride as apparently my reputation had preceded me.

“Yes I am,” I replied. “I’m sorry.”

Karaoke is one of my favorite things of all time. I will not let an opportunity to sing Elton John pass me by, as I figure life is too short to not belt “Philadelphia Freedom” for all the world to hear.

Now, I want to be clear. I’m great at karaoke. I am not great at singing. But the way I see it, my blossoming career as a karaoke artist has almost nothing to do with my singing skills — karaoke is all about confidence, performance quality and song choice.

Confidence can come in liquid form or straight from the heart. Most of the time, I don’t go belting songs as I walk down the street. I accidentally dialed my boss while singing my heart out to Lily Allen, and trust me, that was worse than singing karaoke naked. I don’t go around thinking I’m a great singer when I’m not, but I feel confident that when I get up on stage I’m going to be just good enough that I don’t get booed off stage.

Performance quality is also known as the x-factor — that certain something that is so captivating it distracts the audience from how the person actually sounds. Some pop singers use outrageous clothes, non-stop dance or pyrotechnics to distract. I use my raw, unbridled enthusiasm for what I’m doing. I’m not just singing the words. In that moment, I am the song. The song is me. I am Bennie, the Jets and that mohair suit together. I can convince you that you read about me in a magazine. I move, I use facial expressions, I perform. You ears might not like me, but your eyes are captivated. You’re witnessing a Grammy-winning karaoke performance.

Finally, song choice can make or break a routine. I’m no fool: I don’t use Whitney, Mariah, Christina, Queen, Heart or anything anyone on American Idol has ever managed to screw up. I meet my low expectations with songs that don’t force me to belt the high notes. The more monotone the song, the better I sound. There will be no Star Spangled Banner, because you can’t lip sync in karaoke. Nice and simple, nice and easy. And I’m a superstar.

— Brenna McDermott

My slow cooker adventures have been moderately successful so far. I’ve tried three recipes, two of which I liked, one of which had too much onion.

Or maybe it was my lack of onion dicing skills that killed the meal.

1 onion, diced

This entry in my recipe for pulled pork stopped me in my tracks. Sure, I can rinse an onion. Peel an onion skin? Sure thing! But dice a whole onion? That sounds like advanced cable food channel nonsense. I’m cooking in a slow cooker. I’m the laziest kind of chef. I want to put everything in a pot and go about my business for 10 or 12 hours.

I don’t want to dice an onion anymore than I want to braise a leg of lamb. And yes, I had to look up what braising was just now. I’m a slow cooker gal, recipe inventors! I don’t have the first clue how to dice an onion.

So I did what any tech-addicted 24 year old would do. I Googled that nonsense.

I’m glad I did, because I probably would have just started cutting it up in an awkward way with my sad, twice handed-down knives. Is there a certain kind of knife I’m supposed to be using? Because dull ones aren’t working. Are there any other kinds?

I found plenty of YouTube videos, but I thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea to hold a knife and watch a video at the same time. So I settled on a nice wiki page — How to dice an onion. For dummies, the website screamed at me inside my head.

I followed the directions — but even direction followers aren’t guaranteed a perfect onion. I cut the onion in half, placed one half down and made slices almost all the way to the middle of the onion half, just like the directions told me. People, I’m a devout rule follower — I was reading and rereading the directions, really I was. Then I turned the onion and cut it horizontally across my previous vertical cuts.

AND CHAOS ENSUED.

Onion slices. Everywhere. Onion slices on the floor, onion slices in the sink, onion slices flying up and smacking me on the head as if to mock me. “You’ve failed, Brenna,” the onion slices said. “Try dicing us now!”

Instead of having little tiny diced pieces, I had long, thick strips of onion that were making me cry, both because of the smell and because of my internal heartache at my basic culinary failure.

I then was forced to cut each individual onion strip into tiny pieces. It seemed there were swarms of onion strips. The dicing would never end, it seemed. So I got mad and dumped a bunch of onion strips in the slow cooker. Perhaps this is why the finished product tasted so oniony.

The lazy slow cooker part of me wants to be a little container of diced onions for next time. Slow cooker part of me doesn’t like to do things she isn’t good at — easier to just give up and buy an onion chopper or let the grocery store dice my onions and overcharge me. Right? … Right?!

But that would cost money and flavor — who knows how long those onion pieces would have been sitting before I used them? Who knows how much vacation money I would invest in pre-diced onion?

I could give up, but I’ve come so far already. I purchased a slow cooker. I purchased a recipe book that I’ve looked through more than once. What’s an onion dicing now and then, right? Tedious and hard on my eyeball moistness, sure. But I’m probably going to sacrifice flavor without a homemade diced onion of my own.

I posted my shame on Facebook and a friend reminded me that Julia Child started out the same way. This led to a 10-minute interlude of me practicing my Julia Child voice, but then some insight after that.

Everyone starts out being a crappy onion dicer. But I don’t have to end up that way. I could end up a middle-of-the-road onion dicer — and maybe that would lead to being a mediocre pepper slicer and a C average corn husker — and I basically am Julia Child at that point.

So watch out onions and be prepared hospital emergency rooms — because I’m going to either give the onion another go and cut my finger off or buy those flavorful pieces in a plastic container and pretend like I diced them myself like a pro. Or maybe I should hunt down the onion dicer at the grocery store and ask for a lesson…

— Brenna McDermott

I was giddy when school, I mean work, was called off Thursday afternoon and all day Friday due to snow. My first grown-up snow day — what a wonderful notion. No adults to give me chores, no to-do lists, just relaxing at home.

I didn’t count on the fact that there was an adult waiting at home — me. What a downer.

I stretched out on my couch and watched the downpour outside on my porch. “Ha, Mother Nature,” I thought to myself. “Thanks for the free day!”

One hour later, I was cleaning out my home desk and reorganizing my sticky notes. Darn it, snow — you haven’t given me a free day at all.

It felt strange to sit at home on a Thursday afternoon with nothing to do, no progress, no work, no assignments. I could say I didn’t enjoy the lounging — I really, really did. But the guilt. Oh, the guilt. Lists of things to do around the house started forming in my mind. Dishes to do, laundry to wash, paintings to hang and boxes to clean out from when I moved here a year ago. I thought I was escaping bosses when I left work, but I was bossing myself at home.

Yep, I guess that means I’m an adult. Sure, I watched my fair share of TV the last few days, but I felt a responsibility to take care of my apartment since I had the free time, not to mention unburying my car from the drifts. I could have napped all day (as opposed to the two-hour nap I took) but instead I folded clothes and took the trash out.

I enjoyed being productive, though. If I’d laid around all day, sure I would have enjoyed being lazy, but in the back of my head I would have been thinking about my clogged drain and unmatched socks sitting in my bottom drawer. I got all those socks matched by the way. I’d call that a victory. So bring it on, snow days. I’ll play ball — bring me another foot of snow and I’ll have my DVDs organized in alphabetical order and my floors waxed.

— Brenna McDermott