almost Halloween

We had S.'s preschool Halloween in-class party today and that was fun. He didn't want to wear a costume, but he was happy to wear the pumpkin hat I made him along with an orange shirt with pumpkins on it. He was really rather cute. The kids who wore costumes with masks seemed to scare him a bit. :-( Wednesday night we had pumpkin carving night at school and he helped make a nice jack-o-lantern. We have two more pumpkins to carve tonight or tomorrow.

It is warm here today, as it often is in the Bay Area on Halloween. Despite that I am pretending we are having fall weather and I have a quadruple batch of Pepper Potato Fennel Soup in the crockpot and will be making a chard strudel to accompany it tonight.

We are going to try to do something relatively low-key yet Halloween-y tomorrow. If nothing else we can all sit on the porch and hand out candy.

Not much else. Too much baby prep to do, but first I need a nap after too many days of not nearly enough sleep.

even more disturbing re: The Bay Bridge

The bridge has been closed since Tuesday when a 5,000-pound steel beam and two steel tie rods that were holding together a cracked structural support failed and rained down on the upper deck, damaging three cars but causing no serious injuries.
...

However, crews have had a difficult time finding a fix that would prevent the steel rods from rubbing against other metal. That was what led to the initial failure.

Engineers failed to take into account how vibrations from wind and 280,000 cars a day would affect a patch fix to the cantilever section made over the Labor Day weekend.

...

Caltrans crews had been inspecting the bridge repair weekly, closing one or two lanes of traffic each Friday and Saturday night while workers in lifts looked at the saddles and tie rods used in the Labor Day fix.

On Oct. 10, they discovered that the rods that were part of the repair were vibrating. At that point, they began considering ways to strengthen the repair; however, they did not feel it was dangerous enough to close the bridge.

Really? The engineers failed to factor in vibrations from wind and cars when fixing part of a bridge? Really? This in earthquake country on a bridge that already failed in an earthquake? You have got to be kidding me. And they knew there was an issue but didn't bother to close the bridge to fix it? They waited until it actually broke?

I have no words.

That bridge should have been closed until the work could be done correctly back when they discovered the original issue in September. They should not have rushed the repair in order to reopen the bridge only to have it fail one month later. This is ridiculous. Keep that damned bridge closed as long as necessary and get it fixed correctly. Yes, it is incredibly inconvenient, but so is dying or being injured from a bridge failure. Rushing to get it open for commute time is just stupid and perilous to anyone who drives that bridge.