emotional ping-pong

[0dense]

me, having gotten to the point in the year when I commute home in the dark and am very excited if I make it back before 7:30: :|

me on the bus, noticing that the city's put the lights back up in the trees: :D


Also, director and I are planning our door-decorations for the department halloween competition, and also our new hires are finally (finally!) onboarding, so I need to figure out what responsibilities to share with the new folks so that I don't stay as late and can have some time to study too, because I love this job but it is consuming me. Hosted a workshop today though, and got good feedback! so we're doing something right at least. 




..................................literally as I was writing the above I got a ping about a bit of absolutely WACK local news and apparently if we're collectively shut down to the extent that I can't go to work, I'll be spending tomorrow writing a story about a nuclear project under these hills, so uh if we go dark, just find me by my vibes I guess

Comments

[yuuago]

Hopefully things will relax for you a little bit soon. Getting home that late just ain't good for a person.

Also re: the local news stuff. ?! 'Collectively shut down'? Sounds kind of scary. Is everything okay over there...?

[0dense]

hi! in retrospect I was def melodramatic out of irritation, sorry for being worrysome!

last year california had those massive fires largely because of our local electric company being incompetent and dangerous and sparking off. Camp Fire is on them. And so, to prevent that from happening this year, they have decided to do rolling blackouts whenever they think the weather is bad (hot, dry, and windy) enough. And I'm very glad to not be on fire! but they also had an entire year to properly address this, and instead, the power company is not providing power. And apparently they'll be doing this for up to a week.

it's just so unnecessary. I'm fine with blackouts, personally; it happens, we'll live. but they gave us six hours of warning for a decision that had been made at least a whole day ago (I know someone who's low-ranked in PG&E, so she knew a day ahead but didn't spread the word. But a decision like this can't be a snap move, and we didn't even get warning that they were considering it), and I think that's vastly unfair. Like, hospitals deserve more time to prepare! They have generators for a real emergency, but we don't need to cause one! A single relief tent for shade and water per county for impacted people is so insufficient it's an insult.

I mentioned being shut down because I take public transportation, and I wasn't sure the trains would be running. Instead, it turns out BART can pull power from lit districts to keep the trains running (and isn't that a ridiculously sci-fi thought! how is this real) even when the stations are on generators, and everyone overcompensated for that and drove, so buses and overland traffic was impacted as well as traffic lights being down. If it would have had to take me two hours to get to work, I would've stayed home and no one would've judged me.

Luckily so far I've been in powered zones, and I'll always give thanks not to be on fire, but it's just ...so frustrating. Last year facilities were closed for poor air quality from smoke; this year schools are closing because there's no power. I cannot say that this is appropriate behavior from PG&E.

So yeah, we're not too happy with PG&E these days! But: it's not a danger! I'm very sorry to've made you worry! OTL

[yuuago]

Oh, I see! Thanks for the explanation.

It's good that there's no fire danger right now, but it sounds like the power company is going about things in an extremely shitty way. :|