Carmageddon

A stretch of the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles is closed for 53 hours this weekend. People have been going crazy "preparing for the worst". Businesses are preparing for the end of the world. Local residents on the west side fear they may not even be able to leave their houses, and a hospital at UCLA is offering beds to its employees who fear they may not be able to commute to work. JetBlue even offered $4 flights from Burbank to Long Beach for the weekend, for those trying to travel. For all that, you'd think we were in the middle of a civil war, or some kind of attack on American soil. Nobody has bombed the freeway. They are just closing it to repave some ramps.

I watched it on the TV news. People are seriously going nuts. NPR even did a piece on it.

This is the reason that we drove down on Wednesday and unloaded the truck, and the reason that I'm parked in LA for 4 days waiting for our departure on the boat next Monday morning. Strangely, it has afforded me the time to write, to work on manuscripts and my dissertation, like a real grad student--or, at least, a studious and virtuous one. I get up in the morning and work on the most recent round of edits. I catch up on emails. I go to the post office, which I can't do on the island, and to Target to buy soap, which comes in a 10-pack only. After all this commotion getting ready to leave, the last few days have been strangely peaceful. I don't even have that harbor smell lingering in my hair anymore.