Nick and I have been together since Sunday at 3 PM. On Tuesday morning, we went from my apartment in SoHo, where we hunkered down while there was still power, to his parents' place on the Upper West Side. We were lucky. As my brother, who's on the Upper East Side, and many others have noted, “It's like The Tale of Two Cities' in Manhattan right now: downtown is still powerless, windows boarded, a ghost town—and above 40th street is a veritable mecca of shopping, eating, and life as (somewhat) usual. Having walked 100-ish blocks yesterday to collect some clean clothes at my house, I can tell you, the city is a very strange place, and people here are in a very weird mood right now.

Oh, but back to the walking: it was the first real exercise either of us had gotten in days. Exercise. Nick does it on the regular; I do it, well, rarely. A happy medium during long stretches of time spent inside a 400-square-foot box, aka most 27-year-olds' apartments? Random, 3-minute intervals of spastic dance outbursts to pop music. The best songs to get your heart pumping, according to us on this 1st day of November 2012 are: Rita Ora's “ How We Do,” Justin Bieber's “ Baby,” One Direction's “ What Makes You Beautiful,” and Robyn's “ Dancing On My Own,” And the best visual representation of what a self-initiated, semi-solo dance party should look like is this clip of SNL cast member Taran Killam recreating Robyn's “Call Your Girlfriend' during a break in a closet-sized writing room at 4:30 AM. (The flashlights are a coincidence.) And for side-by-side comparison's sake, the original video is also below.

—Emily Weiss