When I left my apartment this afternoon, the power was out. When I came back, the power was out. A few minutes later (after I’d gotten all the candles and flashlights from the previous outage), it was back on.

But I think it reset my wireless network back to square one. Fred never showed back up again.

I call my wireless network Fred. I find it far more interesting than, oh, I dunno, Meryl’s Network.

I met Elisson and SWMBO and a friend of theirs in Washington for dinner tonight. Driving in the District sucks. I kept pointing out that Manhattan, at least, is built in a grid. People kept telling me that DC is a grid, too, only it’s a messed-up grid. Well then, IT’S NOT AN EFFING GRID.

Stupid District. Park and ride from now on.

Well, at least Elisson stayed in a classy enough hotel that they had notecards with directions to 95 South. Made it easy to get out of town.

And geez, do you think DC has enough cops? I was in the good areas, and they were just all over the place. I asked one of them for directions (Friend and I got lost on our way back to the hotel for my car). When I got back to Friend, who was waiting in the car, she asked me what took so long. “He was very young,” I said. “Ah,” she responded. See, you hit a certain age, and there’s just no need to explain things anymore.