Here we are having a picnic on the floor of the airport, staking out our place at the front of the Southwest "Group B" loading queue. We were able to catch an early flight, which was fortunate because an hour after arriving home the power went out in our neighborhood.

It's now the following morning, 16 hours later, and the power is still out. PG&E will not give an estimate for when service will be returned because they're working on hundreds of storm-related outages all over the bay area. We turn on our generator every few hours to keep the food freezers cold, pump out the sewer holding tank, and check email -- our three high priorities -- so we have no immediate crises.

Marina was very disappointed to learn that her school has power, so after two weeks of vacation she was back this morning.