It's fucked up out there. And I am simply stunned to still have power. Hoping it lasts. Afraid to voice anything more. And I'm not normally superstitious.

Worried about my northeast friends and family.

My mom is staying next door to her house with my gram (in my old house in CT), and her brother is in town and stuck here, which is good. I feel much better that she has someone else with her in case anything happens to Gram. They lost power about eight hours ago, and shortly after, a big ol' tree fell across the dirt driveway and took out the above-ground power lines. If the power comes back on (unlikely, but still), they have a live line situation.

It's fucked up out there.

Seriously

In trivial non-storm news, like Teppy, I just carved a pumpkin for the first time in a couple/three decades.

Unlike Teppy, I will not be sharing pictures of it, since it is really really sad, but I still had fun, and I put it on the porch so the neighbors can get a good laugh.

I can't stop watching the Weather Channel and news and twitter. It's awful. Staten Island is just a disaster zone and first responders can't get to anyone. I almost feel guilty that nothing bad is happening here. A little wind and rain, and we still have power (knock wood).

askye, the shark photo was fake.

Holy crap, power out at a hospital?? That's really bad.

I have two different friends in DC who are due any day now (one was scheduled for a C-section tomorrow, but that's been canceled) and are really hoping NOT to go into labor.

I don't see any way that explosion happens without a lot of people hurt.

ConEd says there were no injuries. The transformer was probably outside of the plant. I'm guessing, but they usually are.

I am boggled by the fact that ConEd has 94,000 miles of underground electric cables.

I figured you would know!

Wow. That's a lot of cables.

Also, ignore any hysteria about the Alert at Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey. The plant was in a refueling outage, and it looks like it's basically a tech spec alert. The water level in the building that houses the water intake reached the technical specifications that require an Alert be declared, but it's water from the storm surge and should go down in a couple of hours. That's part of the cooling system for the spent fuel pool, but so far there doesn't seem to be any damage. There are alternate ways to supply cooling.

Thanks, Ginger, I don't know what I'd do without you and your valuable perspective.

Dana, ABQ: It's an interesting town. It has a lot going for it, but I know people who hate it. It's a reasonably liberal area for the west, but that's compared to places like my rural Arizona where they're still not really sold on this whole United States thing. You'd have at least one really great Senator, though.

Quality of life stuff definitely depends on where you live; there's a pretty big disparity. It's a good sized town, so there are cultural things and stuff like the great botanical garden and aquarium and natural history museum.

The airport is really easy to navigate. Public transportation is pretty poor, although it's improving with things like the Rail Runner, which goes up to Santa Fe. Library system is pretty good. And there's a hot air balloon festival!