It is brutal out there. We’re not near a creek and we’re above the flood plain near the bay so we figure we personally are okay–as long as that big tree doesn’t fall on our bedroom.

Michelle was off with a friend and when she came home she said that our street was well under water two blocks away and that they’d had to go around the neighborhood to drop her off.

A few hours later, with it still raining nonstop, we looked at each other: anybody in their right mind would absolutely stay home. Richard had, working from home rather than risking driving under those leaning waterlogged eucalyptuses en route.

And so… The three of us drove out of here the one way we could still go. There was a Verizon store a mile away, and Verizon had recently offered a new family plan that was not only cheaper than what we had, it offered unlimited text/call/data service for each phone unlike what we currently had. Since nobody on earth would want to be out in this, it would be the one day the store wouldn’t be swamped with people trying to change to that new plan while the offer lasted.

It helped that we couldn’t think of any place between here and there that the water would seriously collect in, and that turned out to be true.

We were third in line but that line went fast, even though the workers there were occasionally pacing up to the windows and looking out on the storm–I just hoped none of them had a long commute in that.

We actually got in and out of a phone store and home again in well under an hour with the thing done. Even when that included discussing options on replacing my iPhone 4s and one other phone on that plan. (We did keep the ones we’ve got for now.)

I guess it literally paid to be a little crazy.