What An Evening

Above, cooking beef kabobs in 106 degree heat.

Last evening was rather interesting.

My former roommate and current house guest Jessica and I were going to cook kabobs on the indoor grill for dinner.

About two or three minutes into cooking them, the grill element died. I think the grill was over 31 years old as it may have been a wedding present. So, having an appliance last 31 years is not too bad. I'll have to get another one this coming week.

This forced us to fire up the Weber barbecue outside. Unfortunately, it was 106­ degrees outside. Before firing up the barbecue, I started the generator to The Beast so I could run the air conditioner. After that, I then fired up the barbecue.

Dinner came out good with no problems. After dinner, we decided to head over to Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors ice cream parlor (only a few blocks away) for some ice cream. While driving there, we saw a huge black plume of smoke coming from the Northridge area.

We arrived at the ice cream store and they had no power, the power went out about ten minutes before, they said. But the ice cream was still cold and they could take cash only due to the power outage. So we bought some ice cream and I checked my Google Chrome feature on my phone and found that a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Station in Northridge had an explosion and fire. In five minutes, the power came back on.

We headed home after eating the ice cream and settled down to watch the 1931 Universal Pictures Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Jes had never seen it before. Just when the movie got to the part of Renfield (Dwight Frye) being taken to Castle Dracula by coach, the power went out.

Even though it was around eight o'clock in the evening, it was still hot out. So, we migrated to The Beast and I fired up the generator again to run the air conditioner. The stay was short-lived as the power came back on in the area within 30 minutes.

So, we went back inside and resumed Dracula.