12/29/2020

Well, last night did not end peacefully. Around 11:10pm, I started smelling something in my room, sort of a burning smell, and I thought maybe one of the fans was shorting out or something, so I turned them off and still smelled it. On a whim, I opened my bedroom window to see what I could smell, and the smoke was coming from outside. I didn't get a sense that it was our building, because it was thick enough to have the alarms going off in the building, but it was nearby. I went to the lanai and could see flames shooting into the sky to the left. It was far enough away that I knew were weren't in immediate danger, but I could tell it was the strip mall with our favorite restaurants on fire. The kind of fire that the building wasn't going to survive. I ran and got my sister and then got my n95 mask because the smoke was too much for my lungs. I stayed on the lanai with my mask on but there were a couple times I had to come inside because it was too thick. She ran down to get a much closer look. I wanted to go, but I thought that somebody with asthma, who is still recovering from covid, probably wouldn't be making a good life choice by choosing to inhale copious amounts of really unhealthy smoke. The N95 mask really helps though! I highly recommend one.

We were up till about 12:30am and had to shower and set aside our clothes and my blanket for the laundry cuz it was smoke-filled. We aired the place out as best we could and it took me till about 2am to get to sleep. I was really sad because those businesses are mostly women-owned, Black-owned, and Asian immigrant-owned. They were just trying to get by in a pandemic and now their lives are ruined in the dead of winter, in a pandemic. It's really upsetting. The fire department determined it to be arson, and I'm hoping insurance will help these businesses rebuild, but it's going to be a long time before they're back.

I worked from home today, which was nice. I was able to do the laundry, and we aired the place out some more. I was able to be tired at home without worrying about going to the office and crashing there. It was pretty busy for the most part, but not bonkers, so it was good. I was able to make a proper lunch, and eat it. We decided to change the rest of the week, so I'm going to go into the office tomorrow instead of Thursday, cuz that's supposed to be a deadsville day and won't be worth the trouble. We'll all stay home Thursday. Works for me! I also filled and ran the dishwasher and started a rewatch of When Calls the Heart on Netflix because it's being taken off there at the end of January and I want to see if I can get through it so all I need to do is get the latest two seasons from the library.

I did not do the treadmill today. I'm just too rundown and on the verge of headachy from last night so I just skipped it. I'm so tired tonight! Leftovers for dinner tonight. We watched Ghostbusters 2 and now onto some Hobbit specials.