The blackout continues
Dec. 16th, 2006 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsGoing home from work was interesting. Leaving Seattle was like leaving civilization behind. Suddenly, there was no power. No light. No data. I drove up the hill into Burien and the place was oddly deserted. The billboard that had stood over the U-Stor-It by Highway 509 lay on the ground, shattered. Getting in, the Ella Afos insurance company sign lay shredded, but the flourescent backlights were still there. The same was true of the Olympic Coffee Company, the people who sell me raw beans. Driving in, a tree had fallen over power lines, and a very large tree threatened more, providing shade to a road it had never shaded before.
We were low on firewood, so Omaha sent me back out to find some. The quicklogs were gone, so I decided on honest firewood. There's a little triangle of land that's not good for anything except being a store lot for wood, and the line there was more than an hour deep. I stood there, joking with a young guy with a grizzy beard, and an older gentleman who was worried that his wife was alone, and she was bedridden after a second stroke, and he didn't want her to be cold, or alone.
As we stood there, the foreman came out and said, "If any of you guys want to volunteer this line'll go a whole lot quicker." I raised my hand, and for the next 45 minutes I worked in a firewood yard. A week ago this yard had been full. By now, they were desperatly running the hydraulic splitter as fast as they could in the far corner. There wasn't a lot of wood left. I loaded wheelbarrows, packed 60lb. racks, hauled them to customer's cars, all through the churned muck of a yard with no drainage. It was hot, sweaty, healthy, honest work. And when I was done, the boss lady gave me a deal: I asked for $45 worth of wood. She gave it to me for $20.
I got home and stacked the wood on the driveway, covering it with a tarp. Omaha and I then took Kouryou-chan over to a friend's house: they had offered a week ago to watch her this evening while Omaha and I went to my company's Christmas party.
We were low on firewood, so Omaha sent me back out to find some. The quicklogs were gone, so I decided on honest firewood. There's a little triangle of land that's not good for anything except being a store lot for wood, and the line there was more than an hour deep. I stood there, joking with a young guy with a grizzy beard, and an older gentleman who was worried that his wife was alone, and she was bedridden after a second stroke, and he didn't want her to be cold, or alone.
As we stood there, the foreman came out and said, "If any of you guys want to volunteer this line'll go a whole lot quicker." I raised my hand, and for the next 45 minutes I worked in a firewood yard. A week ago this yard had been full. By now, they were desperatly running the hydraulic splitter as fast as they could in the far corner. There wasn't a lot of wood left. I loaded wheelbarrows, packed 60lb. racks, hauled them to customer's cars, all through the churned muck of a yard with no drainage. It was hot, sweaty, healthy, honest work. And when I was done, the boss lady gave me a deal: I asked for $45 worth of wood. She gave it to me for $20.
I got home and stacked the wood on the driveway, covering it with a tarp. Omaha and I then took Kouryou-chan over to a friend's house: they had offered a week ago to watch her this evening while Omaha and I went to my company's Christmas party.
