A long, wet, and fun weekend

Friday night, after dropping the kids off with the in-laws, Liz and I made our way over to the Vineland Drive-In Movie Theater in the City of Industry to watch the Bourne Ultimatum. All of the weather reporters had been predicting rain & thunder storms but nothing had come down yet, although on our way over we saw a few flashes from down Orange County way so the thunder & lightning were out there.

It's very different to be "standing in line" but sitting in your car, waiting to buy your ticket to enter a Drive-In. There were only two lines going in so we were slowly moving up, bit by bit, when a car pulled up on our left, the passenger door opened, and a girl jumped out and ran up to the ticket window. A minute or so later the girl ran back and got into her car, and a ticket attendant came out of the ticket booth and opened a gate, letting the girl's car through and the one following it. Liz was fuming but calmed down somewhat when the ticket attendant closed the gate and stopped a third car that had come down behind the first two. She gestured at them to go back then ran back into the booth. The temperature in our car raised a little again when it looked like the driver of this car was thinking about trying to cut in front of us, but finally he managed to make a three point U-turn and back he went to the back of the line. The car behind him did the same thing but I think the third car behind them cut in line somewhere behind us.

Something that irritates both Liz and I is people who hold up lines by asking stupid directions, like: Where do I go? What should I tune my radio to?

To complicate matters the Vineland Drive-In does have four screens, one in each corner of the lot, but it also has sign posts, clearly visible while you're sitting in line, showing you what movie is playing on what screen and in which direction you'll find that screen, and it even has signs clearly posted at the front showing you what station to tune your radio to for each movie. But obviously some people still weren't paying attention at all and felt compelled to ask the ticket booth attendants "Where do I go to watch Halloween? What do I tune my radio to? etc, etc, etc."

Finally we got to the booth and I handed over $20 and said Two Adults, please. ($7.50 per adult, kids under 9 are Free!!! Not that the kids were with us.) The attendant said something in return and it took me a second or two to realize she was asking what movie we were here to see, which makes sense, they probably need to keep track of how profitable each movie is as they probably need to pay royalties based on attendance per movie. I said "Bourne Ultimatum", the girl rang us up and as she handed me my change I said to her, "Back behind us on the left, tune in to 91.9, right?" Both her and the other booth attendant happily replied, in unison mind you, "You got it!" It probably makes their day/evening to serve customers who know the routine and don't stop to ask, "Where do I go? What do I tune my radio to?"

I haven't been to a Drive-In for close to 20 years so it was quite fun and very nostalgic for me, and until this night Liz had never been to a Drive-In, ever. Although she's a woman of the world, having lived in several cities in three countries (four if you count six months in Australia) it makes me happy that there are still "firsts" I can do with her. She'd never seen Rocky Horror Picture Show until I stopped on it while channel flipping one evening, and this weekend at the Drive-In was another First that I was able to share with her.

Usually each of the screens at Vineland has a double feature but our screen tonight was a triple header, although it was "Halloween" both before and after "The Bourne Ultimatum". Not overly concerned about watching "Halloween" we made our way out when "The Bourne Ultimatum" was over. I found it amusing that they finally introduced David Webb in the third movie, when he's a huge plot element of all three Ludlum books. Then again, almost the only thing the books and the movies have in common is Jason Bourne. It's very easy to read the books and disassociate them from the movies, treating them as additional adventures in the life of Jason Bourne.

It's a good thing we didn't stay for "Halloween" because the rain finally came down shortly after we got home. I've never been at a Drive-In when it started raining, but I'm thinking it would drastically affect screen visibility.

When I woke up Saturday morning it was quiet...too quiet. I looked at my bedside clock and found a blank face staring back at me. I looked at the VCR and it was blank, too. The power was out. That would explain why it was so quiet; with the power out our air filter wasn't running. I got up and checked my watch and saw it was only 8am. Normally at this time I'd have breakfast then jump into Azeroth and get in some uninterrupted WoW-time, but we had no power, so WoW was not gonna happen. But I still needed to eat breakfast so I could take my antibiotic (to treat a Sinus Infection I've come down with) so I had breakfast, called the El Monte P.D. to ask about the power situation and got SoCal Edison's number. When I called SCE I got a recorded message telling me the power had been out since 4:30am but they expected it restored by 1pm. So I crawled back in to bed and snuggled up next to Liz, and went back to sleep.

An hour or two later we were woken up by people talking outside. It was the HOA President talking to another resident but Liz couldn't quite understand them. I knew what they were talking about, though; how to get our front gate open without power. They worked it out because when Liz and I went outside the gate was sitting wide open. Lucky my car is parked outside because our garage door is electric as well, although I'm sure there's some way to manually open and close it so we probably could have got Liz's car out if we'd really needed to.

We went to Liz's hairdresser first so she could get her hair done then we hit the local Norm's for second breakfast/lunch. It was pretty busy and when two seats opened up at the end of the counter I told Liz we should sit there instead of waiting for a table, so we did. I told the host we were sitting at the counter and gave her our name so she could cross us off the list of those waiting for tables, but she only remembered when another waiter called out our name and she turned to point us out. By that time our food was arriving so I'm glad we sat at the counter because my body needed fuel. I had no idea what my temperature was but it was 99.8 on Wednesday when I went to The Doctor's. Hot bodies need fuel, and mine was Hot. A medium-rare 16oz T-Bone steak, 2 Eggs (over medium), and breakfast potatoes got the job done.

Meanwhile the rain had started pouring down again and Liz was concerned about her hair getting wet on our way back to the car. I gestured to all the customers waiting for a table. I told her nobody was in a hurry for our counter seat (by now there were 8 to 10 counter seats available) so if we had to, we'd sit there drinking coffee until the rain stopped, which I knew it would, and soon, because it had been raining off & on all morning. Sure enough, as I was mopping up the last of my egg yolks the rain slowed down and before we'd paid our bill and made it outside it had stopped completely.

I called SCE and the recorded message had changed. "We expect power to be restored by 4:30pm." The power goes out, and it takes them 12 hours to restore it? Lovely. We went home anyway, planning to restock the fridge at SCE's expense. Hey, if they want to take 12 hours to restore power so the food in our fridge goes bad, they can reimburse us the replacement cost. Nearing home we saw lights on in the 7-11. Down the street there were several security lights on outside people's homes. We swung into the drive and the security gate was closed, but a press of our remote had it sliding it open. Hooray! We had power! We didn't need to take SCE to court to make them pay for our food after all.

We spent the next few hours bumming around the house, which meant WoW for me, and Animal Crossing on the DS for Liz :) With my Guild's help and a friend of a Guildmate we took on the 18 portals of Black Morass, wiped on the 12th Boss, but bounced back and blew through all 18 Bosses without any further incidents. And just like that I and another Guildmate had our Karazhan keys. And just in time to help Raid Sunday afternoon, which I did, but more on that later.

About 6:30, suspecting that rain would have brought out the worst in our fellow L.A. drivers, we left for dinner at the Red Ant, and so it was that by 7:30 we were on our way to the Blu Monkey in Hollywood to celebrate a coworker's birthday. Traffic was so light that we were there by 8pm but the Monkey doesn't open until 9pm. Lucky we spied a Pier 1 Imports so we managed to kill 20 minutes there, and then there was a Ross's down the road which hung out in until right on 9pm, despite it being one of the messiest Ross's I have ever seen...seriously.

While Liz was shopping, knowing my coworker is normally very punctual I texted her and asked if she was going to be there at 9pm. She said she probably would, but that we didn't have to be. I replied that we were right there, killing time in the Ross's just down the road, so we'd see her at 9.

With the Ross's about to start kicking customers out we left then drove across the road to valet park behind the Blu Monkey. We may have been able to stay parked where we were, given there's a 24hr Ralph's supermarket there, but I told Liz I'd rather not risk it. Who wants to leave a club in the middle of the night and find their car has been towed because it was parked in a supermarket parking lot for too long? Not me, that's for sure.

The alley/parking lot behind the Blu Monkey and its neighboring establishments was very dark, with not a single sign to point our way, but the valet had gestured towards the end of the alley so we slowly started down that way. Then we were passed by a guy carrying a case of bottled water. He looked like he knew where he was going so I asked him about the Blu Monkey. He was only its bartender, so of course he did. Yup, they'd barely opened their doors. We followed the bartender in and were their first customers of the evening...almost.

We walked in and there was no sign of Faye. I texted (you know, that word doesn't look like it should sound, I'm going to use txtd from now on :P So I txtd Faye "We're here. You're not. You're late :o" A few minutes later she was walking in the door :D

Having Reserved the Back Room, which is actually at the front of the club, we were a little surprised to see two large platters of food sitting on the two tables there. Two huge plates of empanadas, tiny strawberry trifle cupcakes, and rolled baklava. Along with someone's drink and 1/4 of an empanada (3/4 eaten). Pondering where the food had come from, if it was safe to eat any (I ate a baklava, one of Faye's friends ate a strawberry trifle), Faye's friends cheerfully piped up and said they'd ordered it. "Surprise," they said, but you could tell they weren't responsible.

Then another girl arrived and claimed the food. No, not a coworker nor a friend of Faye's. She was part of a different party. She also claimed she'd Reserved the room we were now sitting in. Faye turned around and looked at this woman and I could tell she'd just gone into combat mode. Faye may look all cute & girly-girl but she's not someone I'd want to mess with. She's a woman who knows what she wants and if you're in her way, she'll roll right over you...or through you. "I Reserved it too," she told this woman who'd dared to challenge her, "and I confirmed it earlier this week."

"We were expecting about 40 people," the woman said.

"I'm expecting 50," said Faye, "maybe more."

Obviously not as dumb as she looked the woman quickly backed down, so we graciously helped move her plates of food to the other end of the club. Some time during the next hour we found Faye's Reservation sign in one corner of our room, buried beneath some cushions. Nice try, silly woman.

It's been a long time since I went clubbing...a long time ago, in a country far, far away :P

We had a really great night without drinking too much, although the three Heinekens I did drink had me burping more than I usually do, and the pepper steak dinner I'd had at the Red Ant did not make for pleasant-smelling burps. Liz was being critical of me burping up a storm, until she made a burp of her own and it wasn't particularly nasal friendly, either ;)

Not being as young as we once were we Cindarella'd and were home by midnight, just. I was up again at 8am but unlike Saturday morning, this time I stayed up and finished sorting through the comics I brought back from Australia. By 12-noon I was done, with three Trader Joe's paper shopping bags of comics ready to go up on eBay, just awaiting pricing, photographs and descriptions. And my back was killing me.

I logged in to WoW and saw we barely had enough people on to hit Kara (minimum of 10, if we have a perfect class makeup) but Raid time was still almost an hour away. I got my Raid gear out of the bank, repaired my Armor and refilled my ammunition pouch, then made my way to Kara's front door. As Go-Time drew near more and more Guildies logged on and joined us, and a few people couldn't resist having a duel or two. One of our Rogues took down both our Protection-spec'd Warrior/Tanks, twice. The two Tanks then Dueled each other while the Rogue and I got it on, and I somehow managed to beat him. Rogues can be nasty if they sneak up on you from behind, because they can Stunlock you, basically getting in numerous free attacks while your toon stands there, dazed, unable to fight back. But most players don't have a Pet Cyboarg, who I'd set to Aggressive, meaning he would attack anything that came within range. Pets are good at sniffing out stealthy Rogues trying to sneak up behind their Master, so before the Rogue could close in and Stunlock me Cyboarg had hit him, bringing him out of stealth and preventing him from using his most devastating attacks on me. Despite not having done any PvP for a while, I've still put in many, many (far too many) hours on Kwazi, and for me, playing him is like riding a bike or playing a Piano. You may not do it all the time, but you never forget how to do it, so it wasn't long before the Rogue went down, but it was still a fairly close fought duel. As we bandaged up the Rogue mentioned our two Tanks were still going at it. With Shields for protection against each other's one-handed weapons, which don't do a lot of damage to begin with, they were barely hurting each other. It was one of the longest duels I've seen between two players with no way to heal themselves midfight. The only possible longest duel would be between two Healadins, or Healing specced Paladins. Holy Warriors with one-handed weapons & Shields, but who can also heal themselves and so take forever to kill. It was a closely fought fight that swayed back and forth as each player got in the odd big hit. And when it was all over and they'd bandaged up, I laughed my head off as they went at it again, with the same molasses-slow result.

Finally we had the players & classes we needed to attempt Kara and in we went. With this being the Guild's third foray into Kara for the week, several bosses were already down, and we were up to the Opera event, perhaps one of the most unique and novel Boss fights in the game. There are actually three different Opera events but the one we drew was Romulo & Julianne. Yes, a play on Romeo & Juliette :P

In the WoW version Julianne comes out swinging and the Raid has to take her down as fast as possible. Romulo then comes out to avenge her and the Raid now has to take him down, without a break. When he goes down there's a momentary pause...then both Romulo & Julianne pop up and the Raid has to defeat them both, with a twist. They must die within 10 seconds of each other or the one who fell will rise back to life. Several times we attempted this encounter but were never successful. On the second last attempt we took out Julianne but were unable to defeat Romulo within 10 seconds and Julianne came back with a vengeance. The last attempt was a repeat of the preceding one, Julianne went down and everyone turned on Romulo, and 10 seconds never seemed so long. Finally Romulo went down and everyone held their breath...only to see Julianne rise from the dead, followed by her lover, 10 seconds later. With our Casters and Healers out of mana, the lovers danced a lethal tango over the Raid and one by one we died a death. Somewhere along the way we stopped off at The Maiden's chamber, and after two attempts we successfully defeated the 50' tall colossus. So my first foray into Kara wasn't all doom & gloom, and despite dying numerous times it was still a lot of fun.

And that concludes a saga-length blog entry and this weekend :)