Rumor my eye...

(Sept. 11, 2007)

...or something lower to the ground.

It's been a week since Washington Mutual went T. U., as The Register is wont to say. I received the first offer from what remains of WaMu and from the FDIC. It's laughable if it weren't so damn sad. I think I had something like a grand in there, and they want to give us $200. No WAY am I settling for that. Jerks. I guess they want a fight, then. Bring it. I'm ready. To paraphrase Obi-Wan, bureaucrats are my Spec-i-AH-li-ty. Take your best shot. I'm ready.

Yep, it's the 6th anniversary of 9/11. I have been scanning what I can of the media to see if there are any copycat events. Luckily I can find none.

My cousin has been onsite frequently, because his company is the broker between sustainable energy equipment producers and the City of Hope. What a neat coincidence.

He says he's going to rent a U-Haul to get our stuff so that we can move into the apartment the "Cher and Cher-alike" fund has found us. It's not getting cold...yet. The brush fire-produced smog isn't screwing with us too badly. Those who have lots of cardio-pulmonary problems have already been relocated into apartments and houses or the three re-opened wings of the Old Building. The dorm building is almost complete (thank Goddess there's still a lot of manufactured housing available in SoCal) so the single patients whose condition doesn't merit hospitalization will have a nice place to live.

With the Solar, bio-digester and co-generation facilities the CoH will have, the folks living in the dorms will actually have the most reliable power and most controlled environment of all of us, except for those in Helford Hospital and in the Old Building. Southern California Edison is dragging its feet on switching power on for those moving off-campus into Cher fund housing. They say they don't have the capacity. I have pointed out that many of us would be happy to designate as being interruptible, and have given them a priority list of people who absolutely need electricity and those who do not.

We (We being the Social Work staff, of which I am a volunteer assistant) will probably have to reconfigure the list to concentrate electricity-sensitive patients within a particular grid area. CoH is a hospital so they get priority on the grid, but we need to make sure we can locate people in an area that can be an isolated part of the grid and get similar priority to a hospital. This might mean we wind up in a free-standing house or a duplex instead of an apartment. I suppose that's cool.

My cousin says he can take time out from supervising the installation to help us move from Panorama City. However, I fear my old 'hood is a red zone now. We'd better have pepper spray on us or something. I don't feel comfortable with Heat but I'm also thinking both Richie and I should have a nice stout stick or cane on hand. Maybe a heavy Mag-Lite too. Rumor has it that Pacoima was burnt down -- the entire fsckn community -- by LAPD Metro Squad cops as revenge for a gang hit on a couple of cops. That can't be right. How do you burn down an entire community? Gads.