Everything is moving so fast
Mar. 25th, 2020 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynIt's surprising how many songs I've vidded work perfectly in a pandemic playlist. (Though I'm currently trying to decide if I should add to this already REM-heavy set with World Leader Pretend, because the refrain about building a wall and knocking it down, while positive, keeps reminding me of the radioactive sphincter in the white house.) REM: the artists of choice for the great contagion. Unfortunately, Spotify doesn't carry one of my fave songs for this, so while I'm uploading it to make it available on my own devices, I'm sure it won't show up for other people.
In an effort to distract myself, I will pick up on that top 5 meme and offer that up: ask me my Top 5 anything and I will answer.
At some point, I have to go out to the drugstore for my meds, because they don't deliver. As far as I can tell, they don't even bring them to your car in the parking lot, and young people seem to be especially shitty about doing anything social distancing wise. Really looking forward to that.
I thought things couldn't get any worse, but then the only really simple way into my part of town, the West Seattle high-rise bridge, was shut down for possibly many many months, and the low drawbridge beneath it will only be open to freight and first responders. So the only way out of here, once people start going back to work, will be to go to a water taxi into downtown, one that has no actual bus service beyond a couple in the morning and a couple in the evening, during rush hour one-way each time period, and no places to park, or driving south on two-lane roads and then driving north, in one case over a bridge that's been on a waiting list for significant repair for years. It's already difficult to get people to come over here, like services (I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get typical service people for normal things, and been told they don't come to West Seattle), but I know this will mean a lot of people will curtail deliveries to the area, at a time when we are woefully understocked on necessities. We're always the last area to get city services, too, and since all the shipping freight comes through the docks that ring the harbor below that bridge, there will be hundreds of semis lined up every day.
This will be a nightmare on top of a nightmare. We have no hospitals, they've always just figured that since it's a straight shot across the waterway to First Hill, where all the hospitals and medical services are, we didn't need one. We're basically parallel to downtown, but completely cut off from it. And it was announced without warning, with no plans or concrete information, and only a press briefing a couple days from the announcement and immediate shutdown, which still hasn't happened. The director of transportation is a white guy who changed his last name to Zimbabwe. Which I suppose says it all--he's never come across as even remotely competent, especially when we were dealing with the shutdown last year of northbound Hwy. 99, which connected most of us west and south residents to downtown and north of there. He's a complete buffoon--they've known about it for months, I guess, the cracks look terrible, but they just...suddenly shut it down with four hours' warning.
Sometimes I really don't know if I want the end times to claim me and just get it over with.
In an effort to distract myself, I will pick up on that top 5 meme and offer that up: ask me my Top 5 anything and I will answer.
At some point, I have to go out to the drugstore for my meds, because they don't deliver. As far as I can tell, they don't even bring them to your car in the parking lot, and young people seem to be especially shitty about doing anything social distancing wise. Really looking forward to that.
I thought things couldn't get any worse, but then the only really simple way into my part of town, the West Seattle high-rise bridge, was shut down for possibly many many months, and the low drawbridge beneath it will only be open to freight and first responders. So the only way out of here, once people start going back to work, will be to go to a water taxi into downtown, one that has no actual bus service beyond a couple in the morning and a couple in the evening, during rush hour one-way each time period, and no places to park, or driving south on two-lane roads and then driving north, in one case over a bridge that's been on a waiting list for significant repair for years. It's already difficult to get people to come over here, like services (I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get typical service people for normal things, and been told they don't come to West Seattle), but I know this will mean a lot of people will curtail deliveries to the area, at a time when we are woefully understocked on necessities. We're always the last area to get city services, too, and since all the shipping freight comes through the docks that ring the harbor below that bridge, there will be hundreds of semis lined up every day.
This will be a nightmare on top of a nightmare. We have no hospitals, they've always just figured that since it's a straight shot across the waterway to First Hill, where all the hospitals and medical services are, we didn't need one. We're basically parallel to downtown, but completely cut off from it. And it was announced without warning, with no plans or concrete information, and only a press briefing a couple days from the announcement and immediate shutdown, which still hasn't happened. The director of transportation is a white guy who changed his last name to Zimbabwe. Which I suppose says it all--he's never come across as even remotely competent, especially when we were dealing with the shutdown last year of northbound Hwy. 99, which connected most of us west and south residents to downtown and north of there. He's a complete buffoon--they've known about it for months, I guess, the cracks look terrible, but they just...suddenly shut it down with four hours' warning.
Sometimes I really don't know if I want the end times to claim me and just get it over with.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 10:11 pm (UTC)My preferred route from West Seattle is California to top of hill, left on Thistle to 35th, follow 35th down to 108th and take that till then going right on Ambaum all the way to whichever destination (like when I went to Normandy Park for my folks, I had to leave Ambaum to get to Sylvester).
Second choice is same till I get to Roxbury, then Roxbury to horrible Myers Way, then get on southbound 509 till whichever exit I need (like for Des Moines, you follow 509 all the way to its end point, then take whatever that road is that runs from around the airport to Des Moines Way).
If I'm somewhere like Southcenter or Tukwila, I suck it up and take 518 to 1st. But sometimes I take Southcenter Pkwy to the back side of the hills there, and head up to Pacific Hwy S, then to what used to be Perimeter Rd, till I get to Sunnydale. Wherever I'm going after that.
I have been known to get on to soutbound I-5, and when Dad was alive, I took that to 206th exit, then Military Rd., then 216th.
Very very occasionally I have taken Highland Park Wy to that weird little freeway that goes to Tukwila, what is it, 599? And then go through one of the Southcenter routes, or 518 to my folks'. But I always always get lost trying to get to 599. So I avoid it at all costs.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 10:53 pm (UTC)Confession: I like to cut through Shorewood. It takes longer, but it's so pretty and the roads are bendy! (As I went to Shorewood Elementary, I learned that route young) So from Marine View Drive, I'd go east on 106th to 26th, go south and take a right on 116th, then a left on 28th, go left again when it joins up with Marine View Drive, hang a left on SW 122th, then left on Shorewood Drive, follow that until SW 131st, which turns into SW 130th, and then I take a right when I hit Ambaum.
That sounds way more complicated than it actually is, BTW. (And I've left off a lot of SWs there.)
(I'll also confess that I'd have probably cut over Gregory Heights to get to Normandy Park, but that's because I hate getting to Sylvester from Ambaum and also because I cut up through Gregory Heights from Normandy Park a lot when I was driving home from high school and didn't feel like going along Sylvester to get to Three Tree Point. Obviously, if I'm going to your place from Mom and Dad's or their place from West Seattle, I go Maplewild to get to them instead of Sylvester. Except after the 2001 quake. Maplewild was closed at 33rd for AGES after that.)
no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 11:00 pm (UTC)We actually went on a long drive to the foothills of Mount Rainier the first time we dropped supplies off for Mom and Dad, so the 7th, I guess. Anyhow, we decided to go aimlessly south and took 1st Ave to Des Moines and OMG, first of all, the horse pasture on 1st a little before you get to that Normandy Park business core where the QFC is is now houses (I think I knew and forgot that) and wow, that is a MUCH longer drive than I remembered it being.