Chaos Attraction

Did Someone Build An Ark?

2008-01-04, 3:35 p.m.

Gah, it is a nightmare outside today. To the point where I seriously debated "calling in sick" to work so I didn't have to go outside. Keep in mind when I say this that I take the bus to work. Not driving, not commuting, not even walking. I just plain didn't want to stand outside for ten minutes waiting in this weather. I actually started flipping a coin as to whether or not I should stay home- and the results all came out "heads, stay home!"- but I did not.

Sure 'nuff, it was heinous out. Umbrella-breaking, pants soaked to near-crotch level fun. I ended up holding one side of my umbrella down so it wouldn't break. I eventually had to put on my leather gloves because the left hand was being pretty beat to shit. As I type this, it is past 3 p.m. MY LEFT GLOVE IS STILL SOAKED THROUGH. It is only NOW starting to dry up a little! Even my pants have dried by now, for chrissake.

The day started off with a real bang. Nobody died on the way to work (though there was a lot of running around and phone calling to make sure the long-distance commuters were okay), but one guy actually had a freaking stroke. Okay, so that hasn't been medically verified here, but when one side of his body randomly went numb, it seemed to be a reasonable assumption. He apparently thought he could drive himself to the hospital, and the Big Boss ran out there after him. I haven't heard anything since then. The poor bastard who this happened to probably isn't older than 40 (my guessing there), so...yikes. (I was researching strokes a little for NaNoWriMo because some characters of mine had/have them, and man, that shit scares me now how they can hit at random. This works for my character, but still.)

They also ended up shutting down one of the stairwells due to it being too wet, and the basement started flooding. People were losing power (here they lost power at seven a.m., but so far it hasn't gone out again), some folks have had their neighborhoods flooded to the point where they can't go home...it's nuts.

Of course, this is California, and we don't shut down for weather stuff unless an earthquake or bomb hits the building, but it seems to me that today uh, might have been a good idea to not have people schlep in to work. It amused me that the Official E-mails that went out would only go so far as to say, "Those of you who are allowed to work at home should check with their supervisors to see if it's okay to do so." I mean, come on, the government workers GOT SENT HOME AT NOON here.

I was supposed to have a shrink appointment today, but I pretty much only went in to work because I told her to call my work phone if she had to cancel, and I figured odds were real freaking high that was going to happen. So when she called around ten, the conversation went about like this.

Her: "Hi, Jennifer."
Me: "I was totally waiting for you to cancel today."
Her: "Yeah, I hear the causeway is really deadly."
Me: "I pretty much went to work just so I wouldn't miss your call here."

Happily, she'll be in town on Monday (I should probably clarify that she works one day a week here and the rest in Sac, hence this conversation), so we rescheduled. I filled her in a little bit on how things went during break, and you could tell she thought that'd be a real lulu of a conversation.

Otherwise, I am having a stupid dilemma. Which is to say, there's power outages all over NorCal and I realized I no longer have a flashlight. I used to keep an excellent one I had from Burning Man that gave off a lot of light and sat on the floor (great for PortaPotty trips at night) in the closet, and my brain has thought for years that it's still in there. Oh, wait, I had a flood, remember? The stuff that I saved somewhere practical like a closet, well, odds are that's gone by now.

This did not occur to me when I was home, but when I got into work, after we all compared our states of wetness and checked to see that nobody was dead, I got asked, "Where's your flashlight?" Apparently everyone got handed a flashlight at some point. Clearly, this was when I wasn't around.

So I have no flashlight at home, OR at work. I debated going to Ace Hardware during lunch, but figured the 25-minute walk back in the rain (I can take a bus to that area to get there faster, but it's not so fast on the return trip) was NOT worth it, especially when it's more of a 15-minute walk from my place after work is over. That said, it's nasty enough outside that uh, I don't want to walk out there even if it's for a half hour round trip. So I am debating whether or not to gamble that I won't have a power outage past the time that the hardware store closes. If I get home at 5:30 and the power is out, I think the decision's been made for me- I can just go out, go somewhere with light (hopefully....) and it's no big whoop. If the power goes out at 9, however...uh, that's gonna be awkward.

Really, I should just suck it up and get soaked and go already, seeing as this shit will be continuing all weekend long and "the winds are dying down now" (though the rain ain't). But still, UCK.


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