Notes From a Blackout

July 14: I type this at 35 mins past one in the morning in a powerless house, using up precious netbook battery power. Just got home a good half-hour before that after driving through intense windy storms. Before that I brought home The Contessa and Lola after we caught the last screening of Toy Story 3(D) at Gateway Mall.

The 3D part was more trouble than it’s worth. Halfway thru the second act the screen goes blank. When the picture came back the 3D wasn’t working properly. Characters in close-up looked fine w/o using the glasses, in plain 2D (w/c wasn’t what I paid for), but foreground characters had ghost images. They “rewound” the film a second time but it also took awhile before the 3D “synched” again. Lola found herself teary-eyed over the ending.

Had the film gone w/o a hitch we would’ve left a good half-hour earlier and not have driven through dark streets and seeing tree branches scattered all over the road. I was taking The Contessa home when we witnessed the street and traffic lights go the same timeas the simulcast radio-tv news on DZBB.

I can now say I’ve driven through a storm in the middle of the night amidst a citywide blackout. Cue Dean Devlin and our disaster-movie of the year.

Spent the afternoon reading. Finished Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, Mighty Avengers: Assemble and Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 9 collections. (Yes: For the most part my new books only see the light of day when the power's out.)

Escaped the blackout in my neighborhood by going to my 6pm kettlebell exercise class (power in their building returned before lunch), and afterwards hung out at my cousin's house for dinner, a hot shower and a screening of I Love You, Philip Morris. Good times had to end, though, as I went home to a powerless house.

I was about to get into some midnight reading (charged my cellphone and netbook at my cousin's) when The Contessa texted me, saying she was w/ M1, and that the latter said that if I wanted to a "sincere reconciliation" I'd should join them in Greenbelt ASAP. Not bloody likely.

July 15: The power came back around 1:30AM, only to go out again 8 hours later but come back after 4 hours in a "scheduled" brownout rotation. Whee... not.