So yesterday I arrived home at 10 PM from my business trip; that was two hours later than usual, as my plane out of Washington-Dulles was late because at the scheduled boarding time the pilots were still in Chicago. When I arrived home, I discovered that the power was out, had been out since about 6 PM, and they weren’t sure when it would come back on.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to have a low-carb supper when you’re trying not to open the refrigerator at all in hopes that the food won’t spoil before the power comes back on?

Be that as it may; the power came on around noon today (18 hours without power), and the stuff in the freezer is largely history. On top of that, it’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit at our house–well, 100 degrees outside, since the power’s back on–and we are all trying to avoid doing much of anything at all, really. Later we’ll probably try to find a pool to swim in.

In other news, I’m a bit worried about Ian of Banana Oil. I’ve sent him a couple of e-mail messages since June 30th, and haven’t heard anything from him. Moreover, his blog hasn’t been updated since July 12th; if I’m not mistaken, all of the posts in July have been quotations from some book or other (the kind of post, in other words, which he preschedules when he knows he’s going to be too busy to blog); and as of today the blog is showing nothing but a WordPress database error. He’s a yankee in Shanghai; I hope nothing has happened to him.