Monica

A friend is traveling (with her housemate) and I offered to go feed her cat and give him some people-time each day. Her original flight was delayed to Sunday, so I made my first visit Monday morning.

It was 39 degrees in her house. The thermostat said it was holding at 60, but...no. I walked around the house checking for open or broken windows (none found). I went down to the basement and stared at the furnace -- no error codes or blinking lights, one steady light (so it had power), and that exhausted my knowledge of furnaces. I fed the cat, cycled through the thermostat programming to double-check things, reset the hold, built up some warm places to burrow, and tried to reach my friend (who was several timezones west of me, so I didn't expect an immediate response). I asked if she minded if I brought her cat to my house if we couldn't figure out the problem.

When she got my message she asked if the power was out (no, there were lights), and we speculated about whether power had gone out and come back on. I said I'd look for blinking or wrong clocks when I went back. Offhandedly, she wondered if a power outage would have somehow turned the thermostat off -- had I noticed if it was on? Um, I assumed it was because it showed me programming and let me set a hold temperature, and my thermostat doesn't let you do that if it's not on, and also it would be dangerously bad design if a power outage killed your post-power-resumption heat. So I went back later, and sure enough, the three-way toggle (cold - off - heat) was in the "off" position.

It's a physical switch, so I suspect my friend and the other person living in that house are going to have Conversations. Ouch. (Also, no blinking or very-wrong clocks.)

I turned on the heat and waited for the temperature to rise several degrees to make sure everything was on track. When I left last night the house was up to 45 degrees and the cat was very friendly. This morning everything was fine -- up to 65. (Yeah, maybe I overshot a little on that hold, but...)

Here's the scary part: originally they were going to leave on Friday, when the daytime high was 3F and the temperature was sub-zero before Shabbat started. When we were making the original plans, she'd said she'd feed the cat Friday so I didn't need to come until Saturday, and I said I wouldn't be able to come until Saturday night and that was fine with her. Friday night was frigid-cold here. I shudder to think what temperature the house would have been on my first visit if her flight hadn't been cancelled.

We lost power around 1 or 2 AM. (Having a UPS means never having to oversleep your no-longer-powered alarm clock...) We've just gotten our first snow of the season -- only an inch or so, but it came with a lot of ice, I'm told, causing downed tree limbs affecting power lines. We powered down our computers, turned off the chirping UPSs, and went back to sleep, expecting to be awakened by a blinking clock before morning.

That didn't happen. This morning after a quick shower (the water heater is gas-powered, but the decider-to-cue-heat is apparently electrical) I checked the freezer -- surprisingly warm but the meat was all still frozen. (Why did we lose fridge effectiveness more quickly in November, when the environment should help, than in July when we lost power for about 10 hours?) Duquesne Light had no estimates for restoration; they said 30,000 customers lost power and that's obviously going to take some time. Whee.

So I put the crock pot of stew for Shabbat on the back porch where it'll stay cooler than in the fridge, packed up all the frozen meat and fish, and headed to work -- where we have a fridge, the freezer of which only holds ice cubes. I think I get some brownie points for thinking of that before caffeine. :-) I'm glad we have that fridge at work; never expected to use it this way.

We sometimes hear about mandatory evacuations because of storms (hurricanes, winter storms, etc). Hearing about one a couple of years ago that was announced on a Saturday morning prompted me to ask this question about evacuations on Shabbat. Now the question of timing has come up.

I've been fortunate to never have to evacuate my home or city. (Buildings yes, but that's different.) I have this impression, perhaps informed by Hollywood rather than reality, that announcements get broadcast far and wide and then police or National Guard or whoever start going through the area making sure people clear out, and you maybe have an hour or two to get underway at best. But then I thought about the logistics of that, and I'm wondering if you really have several hours, maybe the better part of a day, to do your prep and get out.

I'm not talking about cases where the problem is immediate (there's just been an earthquake, the missile will strike in half an hour, etc), but about other cases where the threat is dire enough that there is an evacuation but it might not be "drop everything and go right now" -- the storm is making landfall tonight, cases where you have (or think you have) time to get everybody home from work/school so you can leave together, pack your car, contact people outside the affected area to arrange for shelter, etc. I realize it's a good idea to get out as soon as you can, if nothing else because of traffic, but we know people don't always do that (and can't always, if not everybody is together to start with).

So for those of you who've been through these kinds of evacuations, or who know more about it than I do, what's the timeline usually like? How long do people take to clear out?

This morning on my way out of the house I said to myself, "self, given how cold it is outside (-9F, predicted high 1F), if you let the regular programming on the thermostat stand, the house'll never warm up enough this evening when you'll care". So I overrode it.

That turned out to be prescient. The astute will notice that I am posting to LJ during the work day but LJ is blocked at work. No I'm not using my phone to do this.

I missed the "the office is closed" robo-call by approximately 1 minute, it seems. No heat, and soon no water. (I assume because water-filled pipes in an unheated building during a cold snap are a hazard, but I didn't ask.) I wonder how many days it will take them to get that repaired; our landlord is not very attentive to building maintenance even in the best of times, and I imagine that furnace-repair people are hard to come by right now.

I stayed long enough for my manager (in a more-westerly timezone) to get in so I could ask for clarification on relevant work-from-home policies. Most people have laptops and took them home last night just in case. I don't, and we're not allowed to access the corporate network with personal machines (even via an approved VPN client), except for some hacky system that requires IE and so doesn't work on my Mac, and I really didn't feel like carrying a tower, at least one monitor, and other peripherals home. We found a way for me to not have to take mandatory PTO today, so yay.

The house has warmed up one degree since I left this morning. But I have warm clothes, tea, and if I'm lucky, a cat on my feet.

Wednesday night as we were preparing dinner a mighty storm came roaring down on us. It started with high winds, during which we dropped the canopies and made sure tents were secure. As the rains started, most of us headed for the house and a few instead headed for the pantry and kitchen, the other buildings (rather than tents) in camp.

In the house we opened the camp-ward windows (which were not wind-ward) to watch the storm. After a few minutes someone spotted an impending visitor, and a moment later we opened the door to alaricmacconnal, bearing an umbrella and a mischievous smile. He noted that they in the kitchen/pantry were well-stocked with food and drink and they were concerned about us. We requested goldfish crackers and water and he headed back across the camp.

A few minutes later he returned, bearing a box of crackers, a jug of water, and a bottle of white wine. (Fish calls for white and not red, right?) We thanked him and he returned to the pantry rather than joining us. We went back to watching the storm and listening to Lucetta tell a Russian fairy tale.

Several minutes later Alaric was back, this time bearing a bottle of red wine, mere moments after we had finished the bottle of white. He also offered us uncooked pasta, but we declined that offer. The storm ended not long after; I don't know what the next round would have been.

The next night, at about the same time, another big storm came through. This time the people heading into the house brought sustenance -- and it's just as well, because I don't think the pantry folks would have sent an emissary out into a hailstorm.

It's summer. High heat and humidity are normal for summer. I get that. But I still hold that, for Pittsburgh, temperatures in the 90s and heat indices in the 100s until 10PM and by 10AM are abnormal. Just sayin'. I sure hope I can catch a ride to Shabbat services tonight; there's nothing to do about the walk home, but it'd be nice to not arrive soaked in sweat. Especially since I'm leading.

Buying subcutaneous fluids from the vet is expensive, except that they had a price-match policy so it wasn't. But they restricted that policy, so I asked for a prescription. I was going to fill it online but it'd be easier not to, so today I talked with someone at CVS who determined that yes in fact they could order these (by the case -- which is fine). So today I dropped off the prescription and met the full force of the paperwork engine. After supplying the cat's birth date, drug allergies, insurance information, primary care physician, and a few other things, we were ready to go. I wonder if Giant Eagle, where I had the Prednizone filled (but they don't do fluids), just punted on this info, filled in N/A, or what.

I got a postcard notice of a class-action suit this week. They know their typical audience: "how much can I get?" and "how do I get my money?" were in bold; "what is the suit about?" took rather more digging. I've gotten money from a few class-action suits over the years (and I'll send this one in too), but I always do so with some degree of ambivalence, not knowing which ones are real (and people should be compensated) and which are "it's easier to settle than prove plaintiffs are on crack" -- and in the latter case, how I feel about benefiting from ill-gotten gains given that the defendants are going to pay the money out anyway. But I also admit that thus far I haven't been motivated enough to actually research any of these cases... the moral high ground is way over there, not here where I'm standing, it would appear.

Links:

The comic on this Language Log post made me laugh. Three negatives in six words indeed!

In the spirit of the song, kinda: Weird Al, Stop forwarding that crap to me (video).

Google+ circles you can use. Social networking: new media, same old problems.

Monday: 80.
Tuesday: 85.
Wednesday: 80 and a fire warning (! I've never seen that before).
Thursday: snow flurries late.

Hmpf. A friend once said that Pittsburgh doesn't have spring and fall; it dithers summer and winter.

But in brighter news, we got our repaired leaded-glass window back today, and it looks good as new. (The installation people wanted to do this today rather than tomorrow; I don't blame them.) It was damaged after the storms in February by -- and I would not have believed this had I not been home when it happened -- a falling icicle, which hit a porch roof and bounced toward the house rather than away from it.

We had had about 30" of snowfall (in two batches) when I took these pictures this morning.

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The album is here. A few excerpts are behind the cut. (The official snowfall was 21".)

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My synagogue is having a talent show on Saturday night, in which I'm performing. (7:00, show + desserts, $10 adults/$5 kids, all welcome; write before Shabbat if you need more info.) We were supposed to have a rehearsal tonight -- blocking/coordination, sound check, and all that stuff. I had hoped to be able to post tonight saying how good all the other performances sounded. (I heard about half of them at the try-out session I attended and that all sounded quite promising.)

But it's been snowing today. It didn't snow a lot, though it's been steady. But it's been snowing a little but steadily for a few days, and tonight the roads are a little slick. So, no rehearsal. We'll take care of sound/logistics stuff right before the show instead. I don't think they would cancel the show on account of weather.

I'll be performing a new composition of mine, a setting of Psalm 113 (the first psalm in Hallel) for voice and piano. Well, I'm not playing the piano (for which you should be grateful); our excellent pianist will be accompanying people who want him to. I'll be singing. This is the song's first public exposure. (Opportunities for a second seem limited, but who can say?)

Dear certain drivers I had the misfortune to be near today: Write "momentum is not always bad" 500 times or until you learn that on icy uphill stretches there is such a thing as "minimum speed", whichever comes second. Having to plan around your antics is a PITA. Thank you.

Driving this morning was "interesting". Nothing had been plowed when I headed out to the morning minyan, which wasn't too surprising (barely past sunrise). Nothing in my neighborhood had been plowed an hour later either, which was cranky-making. They had managed to plow in Greenfield and the south side, but Forbes Avenue (Forbes Avenue!) and Beacon Avenue were untouched when I left for work. I got up Beacon with a running start, but I had to delay until someone got out of the way and that made the guy behind me initially cranky. I think he figured it out as he followed me up, though; that looked like a wave at the top of the hill.

I got stuck on the way to minyan. I could see that I was going to have to stop on a slight incline; I had enough warning to try to aim for the least-bad spot, and it would have worked if someone hadn't decided to pull up right behind me (so no "roll back slightly" option). When traffic moved I couldn't go forward, and I had to wait for the guy behind me to conclude that I wasn't going anywhere and back up himself before I could move. I was wondering if perhaps my tires are just crap (how are Hondas for that in general? it's not age; the car only has 4000 miles), but on the way back later I saw two accidents in that block, so maybe not. On the other hand, I did some unexpected sliding in other places. I think of myself as an average driver; there are undoubtedly things I could learn that would help in situations like this, but I think I mostly do ok.

Things were better tonight, but parts of Beacon still hadn't been plowed. I guess they're just waiting for next week's thaw.

(Email post, second try.)

This morning I wondered whether the stuff falling from the sky was water or ice. I don't have a thermometer, but I have an internet connection.

Local weather: 30 degrees, "unknown precipitation". They couldn't figure it out either. :-)

(The snow already on the ground was crunchy, but the roads were fine where they didn't have mounds of slush on them. The precipitation hitting my windshield seemed to be liquid. Let's hope that's the worst of it.)