It's Only Exciting Until Your Laptop's Battery Dies

A bright flash; the lights dimmed; and then the loudest explosion we've ever heard. A transformer at the corner of Fulton and Stanyan just blew up, and there's a six-block chunk of city that's completely dark. Good thing we're compelled to buy the jumbo bag of tea lights every time we visit Ikea! We hope you like the accompanying JPEG we managed to get of PG&E assessing the damage about 5 minutes ago; you have no idea how difficult it is to photograph a power outage.

Our neighbor, we learned, received a minor electrical shock from his keyboard - "I was just typing," he said, "and then, bzzzzt!" He shook his hands and widened his eyes like Marty Feldman, which delighted us as we've often longed to injure him ourselves as retribution for his late, noisy parties. Also, the traffic signals are out. Amazingly, traffic is flowing smoother now that the signals are gone and drivers have to take actual responsibilty for their maneuvering. Traffic cops arrived within minutes, but they're not doing anything - they don't have to, the four-lane, four-way intersection is operating just fine by itself. Maybe Holland is on to something.

Update: Apparantly PG&E thinks the neighborhood is better this way, because they've packed up and left. Sorry, Inner Richmond - no lights for you!

Update on the update: All better now, but we don't really care since we're already bored by the whole thing.