Entry tags:	clothes, earthquake
Crossposts:	http://zeborahnz.livejournal.com/111771.html

When I was in the Netherlands... wow, over five, six years ago now? I got a gorgeous red skirt, which has ever since been my favourite, but has unfortunately suffered fading and much fraying of the hem and embroidery. During the snowdays this year, when I was snowed in with my friend on the other side of town, I passed the time taking the hem up (it's still ankle-length; it's a wonderfully long skirt, and it took time because it's a wonderfully full skirt), but it's been sitting around for the last couple of months waiting for me to get the dye. I finally got that on Wednesday on the way to meeting undisclosed people for coffee (about something that... may come to something, I'm not certain) and have just followed all the instructions for dying the skirt red again.

Now just to wait for it to dry. I'm not sure if it's a bit more cherry red than when I bought it or if it had just faded that much but I'm pretty certain it's going to look fantastic either way.

Must be time for an earthquake update:

• at work they're knocking down the buildings on either side of the building I worked in. We should be able to move back in early next year. Current plan is to then in another year's time cram us into the main library and randomly give the space away to other departments, which makes me furious, but I'm resigned to being made furious by decisions there. (They're hurting financially due to earthquake costs and lost revenue from students going elsewhere; but I'm convinced many of the proposed decisions are false economies.) Plus a key person has recently resigned so who knows?
• the cordons around town have shrunk a bit more and there's a new bus exchange. (Since February, there've been two bus exchanges which each consisted of a bus parked on the side of the road for shelter and some portaloos. They were great, but y'know?) It consists of driveways, electronic signage, outdoor seating, and some prefabs with toilets and indoor seating, and it looks fantastic. It abuts demolition sites and cordons. At night everything beyond it is pitch black. In the day, you can see machines pouring asphalt on a space that used to be something, and beyond that the hole in the wall of an upper floor of the pre-February bus exchange building; and the bus coming in goes past the demolition of the Salvation Army outlet store that yesterday was merely abandoned and unhappy, and the the bus going out comes past the vertical blinds fluttering in the broken windows of the City Council building.
• reservoirs and other components of the water system are still so damaged we're already being given summer water restrictions (which many years we never need, but if we did it'd be at least January before they started) - no unattended outdoor watering, and handheld watering only on three days a week (Tues/Thurs/Sat for even-numbered houses, Wed/Fri/Sun for odd-numbered, Monday entirely banned).
• apparently City Mall is opening soon (this weekend? or Show Weekend, which is in two weeks?) in box containers. (There are already box container shops operating in scattered locations, eg a dairy aka corner store which has recently sprouted a "Coffee coming soon" sign.) The newspaper claims that some place in the UK is threatening to sue for us stealing their idea, which outraged me until I remembered that the business of newspapers is to recount the truth in such a way as to mislead people into being outraged enough to buy the newspaper, and I'm not sufficiently interested to investigate what's actually going on in this case (quite possibly all they said was "Please don't use our brand name"). They're getting pwned on their Facebook page in either case.
• the public libraries that had been still closed - eg space taken over for council work and such - have been slowly reopening; and there's a new small one on the edge of town; and my local relocated one is opening for another hour in the day which'll make it possible for me to get there during the week. Also the local mall continues to open new shops.
• CEISMIC has launched - a portal for earthquake stories and other information about the events.
• my choir's singing a tribute song which is gorgeous music but truly appallingly sappy-wappy words, I cannot express.
• state of the Zeborah: I don't like sirens from emergency response vehicles. I especially don't like sirens from more than one emergency response vehicle at a time. I'm mostly okay with helicopters, though sometimes they're disconcerting (this one for instance; must be the fourth time it's passed). I'm also mostly okay with aftershocks, as much as one can be of course, but unidentified rumbles hold my attention until I've identified exactly what they are even if I know that whatever it was it wasn't an earthquake. In an unfamiliar place I'll often (but not always) do a quick "If there was a big earthquake right now I would..." spotcheck; sometimes I'll then get a wee "There could be a big earthquake right now" gutkick, but a breath or two fixes that, whereas sirens require more breathing and often blinking too. I empathise more closely, tear up more easily, with stories of disaster or personal loss or communities coming together. In other words, all perfectly normal and of no concern.