Power!

Last night, we got back from Xannoside's after dark but before curfew. As we were fumbling around for matches, the lights came on! Ivy03, Chuckro, and I stared at each other in befuddlement for a moment and then the delighted whooping from the neighbors snapped us out of it. We went out to thank the PSE&G guys and bring them Girl Scout cookies--and discovered we were the only people on the block with power. The PSE&G guys reacted with bemusement--apparently they had no idea why we even had power. But we weren't going to argue.

Still no gas, so we can use the microwave and the toaster oven but not the oven or stove. More importantly, still no heat or hot water, and it's starting to get cold. We're back over at Xannoside's for heat and Internet and cooking abilities. We've got enough blankets that we're not going to freeze, and we were contemplating getting a space heater for the nursery anyway, so we might just go ahead and do that now. (That room tends to be very cold in general.) Ivy's still staying with us, as her building still doesn't have power and smells rather strongly of seawater anyway at the moment.

Small things

The internet came back on this afternoon. "Working from home" is so much more feasible when it's actually from home, on a hard connection with a full sized monitor and keyboard, instead of on a netbook on overloaded wifi in a friend's living room with four other people.

Other small things that bring joy to my heart:
- City employees out in force, from the street sweeper operators to the sanitation teams who crunched up our downstairs neighbors' ruined furniture at 3am, valiantly keeping the sidewalks clear despite all the garbage people are frantically tossing.
- Post office and UPS people doing deliveries.
- Power strips appearing like magic for people to use for free--in the aisles of Shop Rite, out the outer walls of buildings, from one guy's hedge. (It's a power strip run from the side of an apartment building, with a little handwritten sign noting free device charging. Just some person trying to be a good neighbor.)
- The number of small businesses that have somehow managed to muck out and reopen in a matter of days when I feared they were going to be shut for good.
- The gradual reappearance of working traffic lights, block by random block.
- New space heater (still no heat).
- Our governor, whose policies I generally don't like, is being wildly competent and refusing to play politics, and is basically reminding most politicians what a leader is supposed to look like.
- Our mayor, who's kind of horrifically corrupt, is making sensible decisions and cracking down on profiteering.
- Getting through the majority of the salvaged food, in surprisingly coherent (if very protein-heavy) meals.
- Friends turning up, one by one, bearing their own salvage to be added to said meals, safe and relatively unscathed.

Our government is working the way it's supposed to. Our utilities companies are working the way they're supposed to. Our community is banding together and fixing what can be fixed. Our friends are falling over each other to offer whatever we have--power, internet, hot water, food, willingness to cook, batteries, toilet paper--so that as a group, everyone is safe and comfortable. It's enough to reaffirm your faith in humanity.