Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Because we have some money to spare, and neither a car nor driving licenses, cattitude and I placed a large delivery order with Instacart this evening, for delivery tomorrow afternoon.

Almost all of it is things we will use, buying them now rather than next week, month, or possibly season: the next bottles of things like dish soap, vinegar, and olive oil that we will use, and not in the "it will come in handy sometime" way. We did add a few things we don't normally buy that are likely to be useful if we're stuck at home because of a quarantine, or for that matter a blizzard (it's Feb. 29th and this is New England), like frozen orange juice, frozen peas, and a half dozen cans of condensed soup.

We're paying for the convenience, of course: a dollar extra on this item, and 75 cents on that, adds up; but our time and energy are worth something.

I also made sure we are well supplied with spices, to add some variety if we wind up eating lots of rice and beans.

There have been times I would have hesitated to do this, for lack of either spare cash or storage space; right now we're okay on both.

ETA: We are stashing extra paper towels and toilet paper on the (enclosed but unheated) porch.

1. Have you ever experienced a hurricane firsthand?

Yes, several, though mostly at the edges. An incomplete list: the eye of Hurricane Gloria passing overhead in 1985, and then the storm falling apart so we didn't experience the trailing edge; Irene more recently, with lots of rain; and fortunately I was in Boston rather than New York for Sandy.

2. Have you ever experienced outside heat over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celcius)?

Yes, a few times in New York City heat waves, which also tend to be very humid. When I saw a bank thermometer in Juarez that said 35 (C) my immediate reaction was to doubt it, because the air was so dry. Then I crossed the street and bought a cold drink, because hot+dry=risk of dehydration.

3. When and where was the coldest temperature you have ever experienced?

Somewhere around -30 C, in Montreal in winter. I wasn't tracking exact temperatures, just whether cold+wind+snow meant we were staying in that day. (Temperatures that feel like -30 with windchill are unpleasant but not surprising in winter in that part of the world; my winter coat comes from LL Bean, and is rated to -25 F/-30 C by itself, -40 with a good sweater underneath. I find fleece- or flannel-lined pants and long underwear essential in those conditions.)

4. Is your household prepared for a possible power outage of two to seven days?

Not if it's more than very local. If my power goes out, I can visit Adrian or pay for a hotel. If I expect a more widespread outage (see question 1) I'll stock up on candles, food that doesn't need heating, etc. A really unexpected one, I'd be heading to whatever emergency shelter they set up. (Three towns north of here had to shut off gas and electricity to large areas, and evacuated thousands of households, yesterday because of multiple gas explosions, so I'm thinking of this differently than I would have 24 hours ago.)

The only times I've dealt with neighborhood- or city-wide outages, they got our power back in a day or so: lighting that hit in just the wrong place took out power to almost all of New York City when I was 14; upper Manhattan lost power once while I was living there because heat made the (buried) cables sag too much; and the 2003 power outage to most of the Northeast United States.

5. Do you have a go bag?

I did, but one of the cats pissed on the bag itself and we haven't replaced it. When I had one, it was some cash, a few days' supply of my prescription medications, and a change of underwear. I should probably put together another one, something I can grab if the fire department says "get out now."

We just had a fire drill. My tea is cold (lukewarm, anyhow).

I was in the bathroom when the alarm sounded. It's extremely muffled in there, and I heard the alarm itself and a very faint "May I have your attention" but nothing after that. The only reason I knew what to do is that I saw everyone else gathering next to the doors to the elevators.

The man running the drill went through his speech, including that we should know where all the exit stairs are. He didn't tell us where they are, except that there are four on this side of the elevators and two on the other, and that we should note their locations when we walk around the floor. Given the number of exit signs, I'm guessing it's two stairways per exit door, as in the last skyscraper I worked in. He did not introduce or name our fire warden.

When he asked for questions, I pointed out that I'd barely been able to hear the alarm. The answer was "Don't shoot the messenger. The law does not require speakers in the bathrooms, only strobes." [The strobes aren't activated during a drill, which frankly I'm glad of.] Why the law doesn't require that--and why the building doesn't have them anyway, as the last place I worked does--he didn't say, and probably doesn't know. In a real emergency, I hope the searchers would have come into the bathrooms and notified people of the alarm.

At 1515 Broadway, the warden and searchers would have been introduced, and would have--as part of the drill--actually searched the bathrooms. On the other hand, at 1515 they announced fire drills days in advance and with signs in the lobby that morning, which doesn't strike me as good practice.

Addendum: I now have a printed copy of the fire safety plan tacked to my cubicle wall. I have it because I wanted ice water, and there was a small pile of them in the galley with a note saying to take one if you needed it. It doesn't name our fire warden--and if it did, that information might well be out of date, given that it says it was printed in May 2002--but it does show the exits and even designate our primary and alterante emergency meeting locations, in case we have to evacuate the building. I was right about the stairways being paired.