It’s been so freakin’ hot here in Tinsel Town that I’ve been sleeping on my none-too-comfortable couch, because my — I mean my landlady’s — antique air conditioner only cools the living room. Last week I’d had enough and ordered, at far greater expense than a normal air conditioner would have cost, a free-standing “portable” air conditioner for my bedroom, where I have bars on the side-sliding windows so I can’t use the normal in-window kind.

I was advised that the new unit is due for delivery today, Monday, via FedEx Ground. I figured that if I hurry home, I can grab the slip they’ll leave on my door and go pick it up before the FedEx office closes. I was so happy last night at 10:59pm thinking, This is the last night I have to spend on this stupid couch.

Ha.

One minute later, at 11:00pm, POOF! Blackness. Silence. And heat, dearies. The quaint living room unit wasn’t off for five minutes before I started sweltering.

After a little while, I heard a neighbor outside (since all windows were wide open at this point) telling other neighbors that she’d reached someone at the L.A. Departtment of Water and Power, who, after listing all the neighborboods in L.A. that were out of power, said they’d get to us “eventually.” Oh, great.

I tried to sleep, briefly. Not happening; I could hardly breathe. Somehow it was easier to breathe sitting up than lying down. So I took a shower and got my hair good and wet, washed out my nightgown and put it on wet (that feels amazing), lit a couple of candles (need some more of those…) and knitted.

Luckily the Mermaid Shawl I’m (still) working on is at a pretty big gauge and has markers galore in it, and anyway I’ve been trying to learn to knit by feel rather than relying totally on my eyesight, which may not always be as good as it is now if I live to be a little old lady. Now the shawl’s getting pretty big, and it is wool, and quite fuzzy, and will be delightfully warm in the winter. You’d think it’d be unbearable to knit. But oddly, it wasn’t. And it calmed me down. I was teetering on the edge of becoming a shrieking maniac otherwise.

After a few public declarations of disgust among my neighbors, everyone settled down nice and quietly this first night. But today’s paper said something about taking 30 hours or more to restore power to affected areas. Let’s hope we can all keep calm tonight. I’ll be sitting in a Starbucks or an IHOP as late as possible tonight before going home. If it goes into a third night, I’ll be looking for a motel room.

Update, 12:30pm: Power’s back on.

I just received notification that my new “knitting teacher” business cards are shipping from vistaprint.com. They have the url of this blog on them. So I figured I should resuscitate it.

No photos; I’m at work. Yes, work. I’m temping at a law firm, back at the old patent secretary business.

I’m currently working on the Mermaid Shawl in some Crystal Palace Merino Stripes, color 34, which is browns and rust. But I have to stop and get some quick Christmas stockings done for a class I’m teaching next week at A Mano.

Sorry, comments are turned off ‘cuz I just couldn’t deal with the spam. If I figure out a better way, I’ll turn them back on.

After a week or so of trying to connect to other people’s wireless networks and fiddling with dialup (heaven save us!) while here at Mom’s, I got Mom signed up for cable internet service, and set up a wireless router.

WHEW! What a difference. And I’m very pleased with the speed, and how strong the signal is. Some time ago I tried to set up an 802.11b network in my apartment, but I couldn’t get it to work at a usable speed. 802.11g is a whole other story.

So when I get home, I think I’m gonna get an access point (don’t need a router, my main computer acts as a router; or I could just get a router and reconfigure my network) and a wireless card for my bedroom computer, and get rid of the ethernet cables snaking all around the apartment!

Mom doesn’t have a computer of her own, but she’ll be getting one soon. Or more precisely, my brother will be getting it and I’ll be setting it up. She has a fax which is actually a multi-function, so we’ll get a wireless print server for that, too, because she wants to put the computer in a room that doesn’t have a phone line, so the fax/printer can’t be directly connected to the computer. That’s not issue for me, with my laptop; I can just bring the laptop into the room with the fax/printer and plug in the USB cable.

Only knitted a couple of rows today, not worth photographing. More soon. Gotta get this shawl done soon and get started on the whatever-it-is with the pretty ribbon yarn.