Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Yes, it was hot on Saturday. But that left us ill-prepared for Sunday, which was by far the hottest day of my life.

That sounds a little funny when you consider I was born and bred in Stockton, in California's Central Valley, where triple-digit temperatures are routine. Yes, but in Stockton the majority of houses have air conditioning (my mom likes the house a nice, cool sixty-eight) and humidity is low.

Sunday was a different beast altogether. We don't have air conditioning (as people in Stockton like to say, "you don't need air conditioning in the Bay Area!"). We live in the most southern part of San Jose (far from the water). Humidity was high, around thirty percent (I think), and it was a hundred and four degrees.

Did I mention the power went out?

So we went with our daily ritual of hanging out at the pool to keep cool around two o'clock. Around 2:30, it started getting very crowded at the pool, since the power went out. A little later, more people came by because a transformer caught fire at Oakridge Mall and the mall (where people go to keep cool) had to be evacuated. We called PG&E a few times and due to "widespread outages" and "storm conditions"(!) they were unable to provide an estimate of when the power would be on.

We were starting to get hungry and all shriveled up, so we headed inside around 8. And lo and behold, the power came on a few minutes later. We opened the windows, turned the fans on full blast (blowing outward, because it was a sauna in the house), and went somewhere air-conditioned for dinner.

We couldn't have gone more than a mile for dinner, to the Burger Pit on Blossom Hill by the gym. When we drove back, the street lights were all out. Oh crap. The power went out shortly after we left, so the house had not cooled off at all.

We decide to wait it out in case PG&E came through. It was hot Saturday night, but with two fans on full blast, we were able to get some uncomfortable, sweat-soaked sleep. Instead, we were trying to sleep in a ninety-five degree, humid house with no fans and not even a breeze coming through the windows. We were also starting to worry about whether the food in the fridge and freezer was going to go bad.

At midnight we started to panic. It had been ten hours with no power (the 20-30 minutes it came back on didn't count) and the food in the fridge was probably a lost cause. We were drinking water but sweating it right back out. Finally, we decided to call Marv and Jess and ask to crash at their place. And if they weren't home, we needed to find a hotel.

On the way out, we talked to the PG&E repairman and asked if it was going to take a while. The guy thought about it, and said, "Yeah, I'd get a hotel. I came from San Luis Obispo, so I have to find a place tonight too."

Luckily, Jesse was home, and awake (sorry Marv), so we drove up to their place and crashed on their couch. In the morning, we were relieved to find the power on and the freezer cold, although we had to toss the ice cream and most of the stuff in the fridge. I had a cup of yogurt and it was not pleasant.

Finally, the cooling trend arrived last night, a few days late. Today was the first day since early last week we did not spend several hours in the pool. (On the plus side, we tanned nicely and got a lot of exercise.) We were able to go to Santana Row tonight and actually walk around outside comfortably.

The fridge needed to be cleaned out anyway, and we needed to go shopping, so it could've been a lot worse.