clearing
Great news everybody! Seattle's air quality has gone down from "Unhealthy" to "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups"! What a fucked up thing to celebrate. I've decided I'll open the windows back up again once the air quality is back to the "Moderate" range, but that means the Air Quality Index (AQI) has to be below 100. It got to as low as 125 late this morning, and even that is by a pretty wide margin the lowest it's been since, I think, maybe last Friday? That was six days ago. And last Friday was when that huge plume of smoke from Oregon and California wildfires drifted in—after we had been told earlier last week that Friday would be the day the smoke cleared.
We keep hearing we remain "on track" for final clearing tomorrow or Saturday. Keeping the postponed plan of Happy Hour with Laney at Volunteer Park after work tomorrow still seems relatively unlikely, and the bike ride with Dad on Saturday really feels up in the air.
I actually talked to Dad, very briefly, during my lunch break yesterday. He called to ask for my social security number, I guess in case he gets into a terrible accent and/or goes crazy or something? Some scenario where his spouse could not be the emergency contact. I forget the exact details. But, since I was on the phone, I briefly mentioned the Saturday bike ride, and we both agreed we would just touch base on Friday about it. One thing I didn't think about: the plan was for us to drive and meet at a trailhead in Chehalis (we would not be in the same car together), and it did hit me this morning that Chehalis is a lot closer to Portland than Olympia; it's an addition drive further south. So like, as I write this, Seattle's official AQI is 128; Capitol Hill specifically is 114; Chehalis is 180. Somehow, Olympia is 53! And as long as Chehalis is above 50 (the threshold for "Moderate"), we'll probably want to call it off. Portland, incidentally, is 190.
I'm just excited to see the AQI in Seattle going down. Then again, the forecast has it going back above 150 later this evening. But we'll see, I guess.
As for last night, just a bit before Shobhit got home from work, I started watching the documentary Class Action Park on HBO Max, and I got 17 minutes before I decided to stop it and queue it back to the beginning for when Shobhit got home. What convinced me was the part where they talked about the guy who tested this "ride" that was a giant ball meant to roll down a "track" that was never built in any safe way, it busted beneath the metal ball in extreme heat, and the guy rolled down the hillside in it and even across a highway and into a pond! That cracked me up, and I thought it would amuse Shobhit too.
Shobhit watched it but had no discernible reaction to the movie, in the end. Whatever. We then watched a few episodes of season two of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
[posted 12:42 pm]