Written before 8 a.m:

As far as I can tell, Scott didn't have to evacuate last night. Gonna text anyway to check, probably. Some parts of Robert's neighborhood(?) have been permitted to go back home, but I haven't been over there, don't know the address, and don't know if he'd be allowed to or not from that. I dunno if I'd go back immediately if I were him and Janene myself.

Texted with Shanna last night and her power had been all day and night and she said 'Can you imagine?" and I said actually I had had a 48 hour blackout years ago. She made some snark about how people ask why she hasn't gone to grad school and "gee, maybe because I'm fleeing fires and have power outages." I asked how it was going with her Scott and well, she said just friends at this point. He wants hugs and she doesn't, she wants intellectualness and that's not his thing. Sigh.

Okay, I confirmed with him that they didn't have to flee again last night. He mentioned that his best friend Lewis and his wife Rachel evacuated yesterday too and part of Robert's area at least was allowed back. He said that his grandparents' was about 200-300 yards from the evacuation area but there's more or less a moat in between there.

(after work)

My third coworker in Vacaville briefly had to evacuate but got let back pretty quickly. The Fairfield one hasn't had to evacuate.

It's .... weirdly yellow outside from what I can see and there's ash all over the place. Somehow my town has worse air now than the fire areas, last I checked? Anyway, it's become "don't go outside" time again for another reason. At work, most of the managers had to work from home but the young'uns had to go to work since nobody's gotten them laptops yet. At the end of the day we were told that even they can't physically go into work tomorrow. We're having work retreat day tomorrow and they were supposed to answer the phones and emails. I guess if anyone has an emergency they are SOL because we aren't supposed to be "working" during this!

I looked at the agenda for tomorrow. It involves Pictionary, yoga (????), sitting through lectures from SuperBigBoss about the consultant guy and that lady who does the talks on growth mindset, and once again brainstorming things to fix in the office. They included last year's list and....I dunno how much we did there really. My boss marked off that she and I did stuff, and of course some shit didn't get done because of coronavirus, but some things just have like, nothin'. Sounds usual. I'm not sure if I give a shit on problem solving this year under the circumstances, but work retreat day is sorta-a-work-vacation, so I plan to kick back and knit like I do every year. Maybe start the cute little llama pattern my coworker wants me to make for her sister for Christmas? It's an adorable llama.

I spent more time on BUT THE EMAILS. I got as many done as I could figure out how to do. I also talked to my boss about how ah, I am distracted by fires lately, so, y'know, she's been warned.

I had a very hard time finding ANY updates on the fires today. No, seriously, I kept looking and even @#%@^$ Twitter wasn't updating with fire news. I couldn't find shit until about 5 p.m. when it finally said that people in Fairfield were allowed to go home. I texted Robert and he said "We're safe still. Just recovering from the excitement" and never answered if he was able to go back or not.

Meg said she has taken in three fire refugees and they are all trying to wear masks/clean/social distance in a relatively small house. Oy.

I heard from Jamie today--they got a new fridge after depending on iceboxes, her parents got back home-- but she had a great 2020 quote: "Plague, heat, ash, discolored sun. People need to stop wishing for a "better" apocalypse. I don't really want worse zombies than we already have."

Shanna has her power back on so she is doing all the work she could not do for days.

Jackie sent me photos of Twinkie and Hershey Kiss cereal. Breakfast of champions!

Upstairs neighbors are partying and screaming and playing music.

After work I watched my pre-signed-up-for Welcome to Night Vale presentation of "The Librarian." I think I saw it before but who knows in my brain these days, so what the heck. They did it virtually, which makes me glad that Meg Bashwiner has something to do, she's always depressed on the "My Plague Year" podcast about not performing. I rather liked < href="https://www.erinmckeown.com/music">Erin McKeown's "Love in the Time of Corona" song (as "The Weather"), very sweet. It's called "The Escape" on her website.

The show I was watching last night and couldn't concentrate on is online now, huzzah.

* Linda Kennedy tells a story about getting accidentally locked in while painting and mentions having to strip to her underwear. "Now, I only get ten minutes, so you get five seconds to get that image out of your head." After her husband finally gets home and opens the door, "he found his wife sitting on the toilet in her underwear with a newspaper hat on her head...." What happened in here? "Just a series of unfortunate events."
* Gloria's dog story. Still like it! *
Marian Ferrante: "I was baby sat by a burglar!" She and her siblings were waiting around and screwing off at Dad's work and this random guy was around at the time....and the next day the equipment was gone!
* Marilyn McPhie had a scientist dad who didn't want a TV in the house but bought one, and then would disable the TV when the kids were left alone...so they'd work on fixing it. Later, Dad got a tiny TV he could just remove from the kids whenever he wanted. Dad got rid of the TV again until it was time for the moon landing.

I feel very weird having a night like every other night at this point. It seems wrong. I know I should have packed a go-bag but all I could do was to put all the Important Papers in an envelope for emergency grabbing and think stuff like "grab all the computer shit." Otherwise I think I would have packed my GIANT travel bag and with what?

I did get up the nerve to email Irene, so we'll see if anything comes of that.

And after I finished that, his mom emailed the mailing list again: store closed till Monday, the house is gone but the barn survived, the rest of the neighborhood did not. I texted him to say I read it, sorry to hear. He said the CHP officer let them go in to "check livestock and pick up medications" and they took pictures of the damage. He said they expected it but it was still a bit of a shock. They were surprised that the barn survived. I asked if they were going to move into it--a while back he said they were considering tearing down the house and rebuilding it and might move into the barn--and he said no, they were looking for rentals in Vacaville. I said wherever you end up, I hope it's safer, and he said it won't be in the country. GOOD.

I said I'd rather he be somewhere safer, but I'm a 'burbs girl and the worst we ever get are turkeys, and he said they would get them there too, and I said that Downtown Tom was about as bad as we get over here, but it's super fun to tell coworkers about that one. After he said "Wildlife can be fun," well, I ended up just blabbing on about ridiculous animal stories and me being a crazy magnet who runs into Duck Rape Video Guy and Bigfoot Claimed To Have A Video Guy and taking Mom to the How Weird Street Fair. Did that till about 12:30 at night....

Hopefully all of that was ridiculous enough to be distracting for him for awhile.

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