Monday, October 22, 2007

Will Somebody Hit the Lights?

Saturday night was supposed to be Lights Out San Francisco, a city-wide energy conservation attempt. George, his roommate, and I hiked up the street to Alamo Square park, thinking we'd have a great view of the San Francisco skyline suddenly going black. At least that's how I envisioned it. Instead, we could hardly discern a couple buildings (like the TransAmerica pyramid and City Hall) with most of their lights off. Nothing else changed, but at least I got a cool nighttime photo.
I'm concerned about my family. I just got off the phone with my mom in Encinitas, where wildfires are causing mass evacuations. As it was, I could only talk a couple minutes because she said they're asking residents to avoid using their cell phones so the airwaves are clear for emergency signals. Right now they're sitting indoors with all the windows shut because the ash and smoke are clogging the air outside. It's nothing unusual, as unsettling as it is. Every year the fires are back, right on schedule in October.
My sister likes to recall the year (actually exactly eleven years ago today) of the Harmony Grove Fire. That night, on the eve of her eighth birthday, we stayed up almost all night watching the news to see if we would be evacuated (the Aitchisons down the street were all packed and hosing their roof as midnight rolled around and a firefighter on the news said, "these fires always just burn straight out to the ocean"). But the fire brigade managed the fire before we were evacuated, and Emily lived to see her eighth birthday (despite her pessimistic sister's runaway imagination), and her ninth, and tomorrow her nineteenth. Happy birthday, Emily.

And now some photographic evidence of how my days consist of waking up at ten, laying in bed until eleven, and walking around cool places with a cute boy:
Bay Bridge from Coit Tower area

Golden Gate Bridge from the other side of Coit Tower

Fat lazy tourists contemplating fat lazy sea lions

Beach near Golden Gate Park

Cute old couple walking on the beach

Golden Gate Park
View from my new room