In an act of mercy, last night's nerd night (rescheduled from the usual Tuesday night date due to Flogging Molly) was relocated to Tortuga-on-Venice. I stopped off at the supermarket on the way home to pick up some stuff the doctor told me to get for my hooves, and grabbed some tri-tip and beer. Pumpkin Ale was on special, but I only noticed this after I had given up on seeing it in the refrigrated aisle, and got some Chimay instead. A reasonable man would put the Chimay back, and go with the pumpkin - or foregone the pumpkin. I, however, am not terribly reasonable, though I am, I like to think, rigorously logical. The Chimay was cold. The Pumpkin Ale was warm. Clearly - I should get both, and drink the Chimay while waiting for the Pumpkin Ale to chill. Logic!

daogre was actually wandering aimlessly in Venice when I pulled up, which was a mercy, because carrying the bags would have been onerous to say the least. I also got a parking spot in the closest possible location, which was an even greater mercy - and may Naufleam, the god of parking be thanked! We threw the tri-tip on the grill and cracked the Chimay. Ah, Chimay. It's my favorite beer, really - with it's fizzy but velvety mouth feel, it's spicy but not bitter taste, and it's undeniable kick. Kick like a Belgian mule! But Chimay is a lonely beer, a profoundly lonely beer - and it demands company. And after a Chimay, one's capactity to reduce its siren song is considerably impaired. And i'm never much inclined to argue with beer. So I didn't.

As a result, daogreand i were both notably cheery by the time the rest of the crowd arrived. The tri-tip, by the way, was magnificent, and went well with buffalo-style hot onion rings. And then the pumpkin pie! We sat down to game in earnest, but before we got very far, there was a power-outage. Everything in my apartment went off, and when I checked behind Aphrodite to see if any fuses had gone out (a framed museum print from the Getty that I hide the fuse box with) none of the fuses were tripped. Wierd. So we went back to gaming, sans musicla accompaniment. But shortly, a number of neighbors, who were entirely blacked out, drifted in to see what was up. We set gaming aside, served out beer, whisky, and Ben's limoncello, and a sort of impromptu (and small) blackout party happened. That's kind of the cool thing about my building - everyone's very friendly, and actually sort of linger around and socialize together.

Power never came back up, so we chatted and swapped stories. Power was still out when I left this morning, but I'm not too worried - if the cat can't watch her stories on TV during the day, she'll just have to read a book instead. She'll probably be pretty mad about the electric blanket not working (which she has actually figured out how to turn on, by stepping on the control). And that was my blackout in Venice.