Loss of electricity causes loss of classwork

Thursday afternoon as I was settling into a post on Bb about Kuhn and SSR for LIS 2000, a tree fell on some wires in my neighborhood and (just like that) I lost my work. I was posting directly into the discussion board and hadn't saved anything. I forgot the lesson I learned during fall term to write posts in a text editor and then cut & paste into the Bb thread.

I felt (sad & angry) like maybe I need to rethink my technological equipment because of the realization that I really depend on my computer, and more importantly, electricity.

So, I'm in the market for a backup power supply appliance so that when the electricity goes out I have a few minutes to save my work and shut down the ole iMac. I'm not interested in continuing my work during a power outage, rather just enough time to avoid what happened the other day.

I have an external hard drive I use to back up my files with Time Machine. I'm also starting to wonder if I need another backup that's not in my home, but rather in the cloud.