Aftermath

It's a miracle - but somehow I never lost power last night.  The lights were flickering all evening, but the power stayed on.  I think I was extremely lucky.  I read somewhere that about 650,000 homes across the region lost power.  And when the outage map for my public utility district was not down, it showed that thousands of people in the surrounding neighborhoods to me had lost power.  And most people at work who I spoke to today had lost power, and had still hadn't got it back.  One friend was informed that he won't get his power back until Saturday, which sounds like a nightmare.  It's at times like this that when not having the option to take refuge in a warm office is going to be tough.  I honestly don't know how my power stayed on because it was really blowing a storm last night, and there was so much tree debris everywhere this morning - including some larger tree limbs at the bottom of my driveway and on the road.  I need to seriously consider getting a generator.   

Wind Advisory

There's a good chance I might lose power tonight, so I thought I'd do this blog post early whilst it's quiet outside.  We are currently under a wind advisory from 2 pm this afternoon to 4 am tomorrow morning.  It doesn't sound like that big a gust - 15 to 30 mph winds with gusts up to 50 mph.  But I think because these are quite sustained winds, plus coming in a direction that the wind normally doesn't come from, that everyone is a bit worried.  The expectation is that more tree limbs than normal will come down, hence the power outages.  And it's not just a severe weather alert from the National Weather Service, but also got a "Global Corporate Security - Intelligence Incident Notification" from work about the high wind advisory.  So it must be quite serious if even work has issued a safety alert for outdoor operations and travel in the area - with concerns about the impact of gusty winds, falling debris, and potential outages.  I don't think I'm in an area where the worst winds are expected, but honestly who knows.  All I know is that with the number of trees around where I am, I expect to lose power and I expect it to be a long and cold night.    

How Much Can I Take Home

One week left of going into the office.  And Operation Take Home As Much As You Can is underway.  Today, I managed to bring my office chair home with me.  I have absolutely no idea whether we are allowed to do this - nobody has told us anything.  But my manager took her chair home, so I decided to do the same with mine.  The next thing I need to do is try to duplicate my computer setup in the office at home.  Which means taking home at least a couple of monitors.  I think I will need to speak to the IT guy about that, but apparently it shouldn't be a problem.  The other thing I've got my eye on are various canvas prints around the office.  These are various photos of Seattle and the surrounding environs, and some of them are quite good.  I nearly took home one today, but at the last moment saw that it had a rip - which is a shame, because I think it is my favo(u)rite view.  But there are plenty of other prints to choose from.  Again, no idea whether I am allowed to take these - and this really does feel like I'm ransacking the office - but what the hell, like anybody really cares.    

Well-being Credit

It dawned on me this weekend that I have a $1000 well-being credit through work for the year that I haven't used yet.  The problem is that the list of things that you can claim towards this are quite limited.  So I've been scouring my purchases for the year to see what I can claim for.  Stuff like my ping pong paddle ("exercise equipment"), noiseless headphones ("accessories for devices"), national and regional park passes and even the cost of tax preparation services.  And though I can fudge a few other things, I think I'm not going to use the full credit.  That seems like a waste, so I've been thinking about what else I can buy that I can then claim for.  And I've settled on some new duvet/pillow covers, since sleeping equipment is covered.  And since I'm sleeping so poorly at the moment, some better quality bedding seems like a good idea.    

Ping Pong

Went into the office today for a marathon ping pong session with a friend - making the most of the ping pong table whilst we can.  Came home very tired and promptly fell asleep on the sofa, hence the late time for this post.  Apparently one of my other colleagues might try to take the ping pong table home with them, set it up in their garage and invite people round to play some games.  Not a bad idea, if it means I can still play occasionally - but probably not too regularly since I don't live close to them.       

Jet Lag

It's been a week, and I'm still suffering from bad jet lag.  My sleep patterns have nowhere near returned to normal yet - I'm waking up really early and feeling tired/falling asleep in front of the TV in the early evenings.  It always seems to affect me a lot more when travelling from the UK to the US, rather than the other way around.  But this time seems particularly bad - I've got a long way to go until I'm back to normal and I don't think it's taken me this long before to readjust to the time difference.  I wonder if the clocks going back during my time away has messed things up more.  Or perhaps this is just another symptom of getting older...       

Headlines

It didn't take take long, but news of the Seattle site closure was on the Seattle Times website today - plus various industry websites.  Apparently a total of 72 employees in the Seattle office were laid off.  That's a lot more than I thought - I guess they also laid off some of the lab folks in addition to the various site-dependent people.  I didn't think we had more than 200 employees in Seattle (one of the articles I read mentioned that our company had about 230 employees in Washington State), so that's probably almost half the workforce here.  I know that all but one person in my function was converted into a remote employee.  Sadly the one person was our admin help, which is a shame because she had been working here for a long time (over 20 years) and was a really good person.  As much as I don't really mind converting to being a remote employee, it is still a sad time - realizing that there will be a number of colleagues that I won't see again.  If not friends, at least people I was friendly with.  And I think when you take the office away, that feels like the safety net being removed from your job security.  I don't think anything has changed in that regard - I still expect to be laid off before the end of next year.  The timing of the closure is very strange - not least because apparently our building lease was up in 2 years time.  I don't know why they didn't just wait until then - I suspect there are some nefarious tax reasons for that.  Now, just lots of questions.  Is there stuff we can take from the office (I wouldn't mind taking home my computer monitors, plus the comfy office chair)?  Will the office Christmas party still go ahead (apparently it has been paid for, but most of the organizers are the people who have been laid off)?  With our company's emphasis on coming into the office, why wasn't anyone offered the opportunity to relocate instead of becoming remote employees?  And so on.  It's not been a great end to the year has it.