Right after the end of the penultimate episode of "Abrazame muy fuerte" the power went off. Street lights and traffic lights remained on. We just slapped some anti-mosquito stuff on and went out and sat in the yard with a portable radio and listened to KFON norteno and banda music for an hour or so. Those with A.C. stayed inside, being afraid to let any of that precious cool air out. The big fear was that it would all last so long that the food in the fridge, just replenished, would spoil or melt. I still haven't dared check my stock of Haagen-Dasz ice cream on a stick. For some reason no one stocks the ones coated in dark chocolate, so I've finally broken down and taken to consuming the ones coated in milk chocolate. The Wall Street Journal once reported that the American taste for dark chocolate is limited to a small part of the northeast. For a while, H-D sold beautiful ice-cream sandwiches, with the cookie part made by Pepperidge Farm, but I guess people weren't willing to pay a premium price for something that delicious. Same for the short-lived H-D Fudgsicle equivalent, geometrically better than any others. Blue Bell makes a very decent fudge bar, though. When August arrives, I'll be digging into Manhattan paletas. There's nothing more refreshing than those tart lime items with no artificial colors. Today our new trash receptacle finally arrived. The Solid Waste people deliver it on a flatbed trailer. They're nested, and the City guy pulls one out of the stack, slides a rod through two holes to be the axle, and pounds a wheel on each end of the rod with a mallet. The old one developed a crescent-shaped slit in the bottom that leaked all the liquid matter and with it all the accompanying smell. Whew!