A New Sort of Normal

Today I got to go back to work at my other job, almost as if things were normal. That is, if normal includes slowing down to 20 kph to drive through clouds of fine dust rising from the rapidly drying piles of silt. Or coming home at lunchtime to use my own primitive santitation facilities, rather than overload the boss's primitive sanitation facilities (we work from his home).

The good news is that the water came back on at his place in the morning, not very good pressure, but over the course of the day it got better and he even has water on upstairs now - it still has to be boiled, but tomorrow I won't have to rush home at lunchtime. Here, however, the water is still very low pressure and makes little difference to anything much except that we can probably get away with flushing the toilet once a day or so, as long as no surface sewage appears anywhere in the neighbourhood.

And I managed to reschedule my physio appointment that I didn't quite get to last week - the clinic where I was supposed to go is closed, but I was able to visit the same physio at a different clinic in the same group.

The third good thing was that my two younger daughters arrived back from an overnight stay at Rangiora, a country town just to the north of here, with a big bag of freshly washed and dried laundry. So the evening was spent first putting books back on shelves (after I hunted on the floor for all the little lugs that plug into the holes in the uprights to support the bookshelves) and then ironing the freshly washed clothes. Our bookshelves are braced to the wall, but some of the shelves are moveable, and most of those crashed to the floor during the quake along with all the books on them.

Sadly, I heard that our local supermarket, just two blocks from here, is so badly damaged it has to be demolished. All the staff have lost their jobs. I'm hoping the same won't apply to the pharmacy, bank, cafe and Post Shop that are our other local shops, but I'm not very confident.

A couple of links:
firstly, one to show that the locals have a sense of humour

and secondly, the government earthquake appeal site. Apparently the amount of damage is greater than that done by Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, and I was going to mention that the first night we had the power back on, we were watching the news on TV and the presenter commented that the weather had turned cold, and it felt like mid-winter. Clearly she hasn't ever been in Christchurch in mid-winter, because the temperature was close to 20 degrees C (about 68 degrees F, for Americans). Probably an Aucklander!