I’ve been getting mail all week from Penzeys Spices celebrating the DNC, urging me to watch some videos of the convention highlights, and making a special offer of two free spice blends with any purchase (Penzeys is based in Milwaukee, which was supposed to host the convention, and one of the blends they gave away was named after the intersection nearest their first store in Milwaukee).

I’d been planning to buy some Greek seasoning and we were getting low on a couple of other spices, so I was interested. And we wanted to listen to some podcasts, so I placed an order for pickup in Menlo Park and off we went.

I had an additional motive for driving North today – I wanted to look at a TV. Our TV is 11 years old – it’s so old it can’t even set its own clock! I’ve been considering the LG 4K OLED sets, and the price keeps coming down; today, Video Only in Mountain View advertised the 55” model for $1399, down $100 from last week. Diane agreed that we could look at it, so we went there after Penzeys.

The store was not busy; we were the only customers. The sales person was happy to show us the TV, and even to connect it to cable instead of the 4K demo source (though he said “no” to MSNBC – he said he didn’t allow politics on the TVs in the store, which is a good policy!). And he offered free delivery and pickup of our old TV if we bought today.

I was very interested, but Diane said “no” – she’d only agreed to look at the TV today. And, as she later pointed out, buying a new TV when we’re also being urged to be ready to evacuate may not be the smartest timing.

So we left, empty-handed. For now.

The air was a little better this morning, so we turned on the fan for an hour to pre-chill the house. And I got a well-timed alert from my thermostat telling me to change the air filter; it was filthy.

I spoke at my Toastmasters club this morning. I chose the “Inspire Your Audience” project and talked about the way the family at a house near us has been entertaining the neighborhood with the ongoing adventures of Bones and Skully – not only are they entertaining, they’re inspiring and have even run food drives. But today, they stayed inside because of the pollution!

I completed editing photos from 2005 this afternoon. Less than 15 years of photos left to deal with!

When we got up this morning, it was cool enough to open the windows, but one look outside convinced us otherwise. The AQI was about 150 and got worse throughout the day, though there was a little blue sky around sunset, enough to let us take a short walk.

To add insult to injury, Facebook showed me photos from five years ago today, when we were in Spokane for Sasquan. There were huge fires nearby and the scene looked very much like what we saw today; as that week wore on, the AQI got worse and worse, peaking well over 500 (“hazardous”).

We have friends who have had to evacuate because of the fire. We are in what should be a safe area, but we’ve packed a go-bag anyway (urged on by our friends the Skeletonis and CalOES)!

The Post Office claims to have delivered my new Raspberry Pis to a PO Box; unfortunately, I don’t have a PO Box. I am, however, PO’ed. I’ll see if they materialize tomorrow before trying to figure out how to get a reshipment or refund or something.

I’m a speaker at my Toastmasters meeting on Thursday. I had planned to give a technical talk about the new meeting template I’m building on Google Sheets, but it’s not finished (and, if I’m honest, probably won’t be finished until the next time I’m scheduled to be Toastmaster), so I had to figure out another topic and another project for my speech – and do it before I had a chat with my evaluator this afternoon.

So just before the call, I was busy looking at Twitter instead. And I saw a tweet from the Mercury News:

The California ISO, which runs the state power grid, declared a Stage 2 emergency around 2:40 p.m., saying that power outages were "likely" unless residents and companies immediately begin conserving electricity. #rollingblackouts #poweroutage https://t.co/Hz757GWrXb

— Mercury News (@mercnews) August 18, 2020

followed by this one:

Here's how to check if your home will lose power during the California PG&E blackouts. #rollingblackouts #PowerOutages https://t.co/UqIZihBSjs

— Mercury News (@mercnews) August 18, 2020

And when I followed the links, I discovered that we were in outage block 2K and were scheduled to lose power at 6pm – right in the middle of our weekly trivia team Zoom call!

My first step was to warn the team that we might suddenly vanish from the call. My second step was to tell Diane what was happening, since we’d planned to cook dinner after the call and that didn’t seem like a good plan any more. So we took out some frozen brisket and thawed it and she made a salad to go with it. And I turned the A/C to a higher temperature to do my part for conservation.

It worked! I suspect we weren’t alone in conserving energy, because the demand curve dropped below the predictions very quickly and our power didn’t go out at 6…and it’s still on now.

I hope they treat outages like jury duty so that being put on notice is enough to put you at the end of the line. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow – it’s still expected to be hot.

I still have to work on my speech, too. Tomorrow.

We followed our usual Monday morning routine today – go to the JCC for personal training outside, then go to Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things. Monday morning seems to be the best time to go to Trader Joe’s – we arrive around 9:15, during “Senior Hour,” when the store is uncrowded (today, we didn’t have to wait at all to get in or to pay) and well-stocked, and we can get in and out quickly.

PG&E was warning everyone that they might have to institute rolling blackouts again today – I got a call, two emails, and two texts before lunch. They suggested pre-cooling the house to 72 and then turning the A/C up to 78 at 2pm when the peak load period was expected to begin (I wonder if the pandemic has changed the timing of peak load) – so we did. The house stayed fairly cool during the afternoon; when we got home from our post-dinner walk, we decided to open up and use the fan in hopes that it’ll get a bit cooler overnight.

Dinner was another experiment – Miso-Glazed Fish from the New York Times. We’d bought a tub of miso paste early in the lockdown; I’m not sure what I had in mind when I bought it, but this was a good way to use some of it. The recipe was easy to put together, but the actual cooking was slightly more exciting than I wanted – I used our small broiler/convection oven, and with the shelf in “broil” position, we started seeing small explosions. So I moved the shelf down and then had to bake the fish for a few minutes to finish cooking it. Next time, I’ll use the “real” oven – but it was too hot for that tonight.

Stay cool!