Kate, I hope that ceiling ends up landing squarely on the seller/insurance, etc for ALL repair costs. I am so sorry that it happened.
Yep, 15 hours to commute to work for three days. Part of it was 3 hours just getting to work Tuesday morning. A highway patrol officer was shot (on another freeway) at 8:20 AM and all of the drivers on that (extremely busy) freeway were re-directed to my (already usually overloaded)freeways. So that was a one-off. And I made the mistake twice of leaving the office at 5:30 which puts me squarely into the evening commutes of three different over-burdened freeways and their commuters. So leaving at 5:30 gets me home around 7:45-8PM. Leaving at 6:30 gets me home around 8:15. And leaving at 4:30 gets me home around 7:30. So, as you can see, any and all evening plans I have that are in SF or Oakland or Berkeley, are completely screwed.
Anyway, had my 1:1 with my boss and we had so much other stuff to talk about that we didn't get around to the commuting one. Today I was up working at 7:30, hit the shower at 8:30, was out the door at 9:10, got to the office at 10:15. Totally do-able on mornings that I don't have a meeting before 10 that I need to be in the office for. I'll leave around 7 tonight and hope that gets me home by 8:15. Outside of some meetings that I do need to be onsite for, I do have a lot of flexibility in my hours - and ideally I will have at least one permanent day a week (Fridays) where I'll always telecommute. There are a few others here, in other departments who have set telecommuting days and very weird hours the other days, and it seems to work for them.
No public transport exists for my commute short of walking approximately 4 miles and taking 3 separate buses (that are not linked to each other). I would LOVE to take a train or BART or something.