so about that heat...
...it finally knocked out our power.
Yesterday I went with some school chums to see
To Catch a Thief at 5:30, followed by food and ice cream at the Palo Alto Creamery. At 4:30pm, it was still over 100 degrees out. I got an urgent email from one of the outing participants, who asked if I could please pick her up so she could sit in my lovely airconditioned car. No problem. I picked her up at a friend's house, where she was staying because—you guessed it—friend had AC and she did not.
So we journeyed to Palo Alto and watched the movie—there were hundreds of people in the theatre, and this theatre is not one of the cineplex super-AC kindas of theatres. There was a breeze, but it was still probably 80 or 85 in the theatre. After the movie, we walked down to the Creamery and had food, then discovered that they were having serious problems with their ice cream. Namely, the majority of their ice cream was soupy. The compressors couldn't keep the ice cream cold enough. But that's ok—we had warmish and soupy ice cream sodas and malts anyway.
Driving my school chum back to her friend's house, once we got off the freeway we noticed the surface roads were very dark—power outage! Let me tell you, if you think people freak out and don't know what to do at a blinking red traffic signal, people
really don't know what to do when the signal is out entirely! I adopted the "let everyone else sort it out/don't trust anyone" approach and we made it safely to our destination—a neighborhood pocket of light.
Then I started to worry about my neighborhood, becuase if the power was off then the fan was off and my place was probably sweltering and my poor cats were probably cursing my name. Lo and behold, I was right!
The power was off, it was really hot, and the cats were cursing my name. I grabbed the flashlight (the kind with the huge battery) and stuck it on its end in the middle of my bedroom—where all my belongs are, since the flooring guys are coming tomorrow—and proceeded to sit in a chair and sweat all night long.
The power came on at 5:30 or so. I turned on the fan and so far it's only 82 or so in the house. I can still get by with not turning on the AC, as long as I'm not painting (or moving around in general). It's 92 outside now, and should get up to 100. That's better than the last few days, but the
power grid system status looks worse than yesterday, which is understandable since now people are at work! Oy. Conserve, people, conserve! The only think on in my house is the fridge, my computer, and a fan.
