GOOD
. . . if you, like me, wait until the 11th hour to do your grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s on a Sunday evening.

Trader Joe’s is open from 9AM to 9PM. And, while I don’t know about EVERY TJ’s on the globe, the one on Folsom is a mad house on Sunday evenings near closing time.

That is, on days without power outages.

At 7:45PM, I made it in and out of Trader Joe’s in less than 15 minutes, carrying 5 bags of groceries (no, not all at once) and a bag of charcoal. When I asked the grocery clerk “What gives?” he said that due to this afternoon’s power outage, word must have spread that TJ’s was closed for the rest of the day.

But it wasn’t my friends. It wasn’t . . . .

So power outages can mean crowd control. And crowd control, when you’re shopping at TJ’s, is great.

BAD
But what’s also great (though in quantity, not in coolness) is the number of folks I saw zooming through darkened traffic light intersections as though that’s the rule when the power’s out.

It’s not the rule.

The DMV
According to the California DMV’s Driver Handbook, here’s what you should do at traffic light intersections when you see a:

1. Blinking yellow light: Proceed with caution. You don’t have to stop.
2. Blinking red light: Treat as a stop sign.
3. Traffic signal blackout (a whole lotta nothin): If you don’t see any colors . . . dude, stop. STOP!

Seriously, assuming this afternoon’s power outage is not our last this summer (and I’m guessing it won’t be), remember the abovementioned rules of the road.

It’s too hot to be strapped into a gurney.