I don’t know how the winds were in the hills, but they were pretty tame where we live. We probably won’t unpack for a couple of days, just in case, but I have retrieved some of the candy already!

It was a beautiful afternoon, so I decided to take a walk. I had a small balance left on my Starbucks card and I wanted something sweet, so I used their app to order a small Frappuccino and walked over there to pick it up. There were a LOT more people in the store than I expected – I grabbed mine and left as quickly as I could.

I’d made one mistake, though – I hadn’t checked to make sure that autoload was turned off on my card. So, instead of reducing my balance, I added to it!

Starbucks Customer Service said they couldn’t reverse the transaction, but they could send me a check for the amount of the autoload. I’ve turned autoload off for sure now, and I found out how to get the balance on the card refunded when I bring it below $10…which will require yet another trip to Starbucks. But it won’t be anytime soon.

The National Weather Service issued a Red Flag Warning (extreme fire danger and very high winds) for tonight and tomorrow. PG&E has turned off power to tens of thousands of customers (mostly in the hills) around the Bay (not us). The news reports included suggestions that everyone have a go-bag packed and be ready to go – so we packed our bags this afternoon, just in case.

We also responded to the suggestions that everyone get their flu shots before the end of October – we went to Pharmaca in Downtown Los Gatos because it’s more pleasant than CVS or Safeway. It didn’t hurt that I had a $10 coupon for my birthday, that they gave us each a $5 coupon for getting vaccinated there, and they have a good selection of chocolate. I think we spent longer deciding on the chocolate than it took to get the vaccinations!

And in the interest of preparedness, Diane put the new chocolate in the go-bag. We’re ready!