Post
by sasha » December 25th, 2020, 2:55 pm
Christmas Day, 2020 - dull, gray, and wet here in the laurel swamps
And that's just fine by me. The NWS had originally called for pounding rain with gale-force wind gusts - and no amount of preemptive cutting can cull all those trees destined for imminent toppling. Forty-five mph (~65 kph) winds can do a lot of damage out here. And yesterday afternoon I received a robocall from the power utility, who were bracing for gusts up to 70 mph (110 kph), and urging customers to prepare for "days long outages".
70 mph - that's hurricane force, according to the old Beaufort scale...
Merry Fucking Christmas.
So last night I glumly put up several gallons of water (drinking/cooking, washing, flushing) and decided to keep the thermostat at its daytime setting to retain as much heat as possible before the blackout.
Which never occurred. I spent the night restlessly, not because of anxiety over a possibly extended period of darkness - but because I was too warm. I poked my head outside, where it was in the low 50s (10ish C). A light rain pattered the roof of the car. The snow shovel lay on its back in a shallow lake that was once the bank into which it had been stuck. There was barely enough breath to move the tips of the trees' outstretched digits. And I laughed. I have the Power! I can control the weather! As long as I prepare for an outage, none will occur!
The day ain't over - the trailing edge of the storm has yet to pass - but the NWS has downgraded the peak gusts to 30 mph (~50 kph) - and sitting here in my slippers, sipping my annual goblet (or two) of mead while the Brandenburg Concertos play, re-lighting my little rosewood pipe packed with some fine weed, I take a pause from tinkering my home-grown software to reflect on how wealthy I am. Food in the fridge, heating oil in the tank. I look around me. Dust and cobwebs that haven't been addressed in weeks. Stacks of books yet to be shelved. A pile of newspapers sitting atop the business end of my shredder, another on the couch. I think: Ya know, it ain't much - but it's enough. And its mine.
(ooh, Brandenburg #4 just queued up, my favorite one. Methinks it would not be inappropriate to refill my goblet now...)
This storm has treated my gently, as had the one before it.
The sun has halted its southward retreat and taken a few hesitant steps back in our direction...
The world beyond is still a jangling, contentious madhouse... but here, in this place, this moment...
...
May all of you at Studio 8 find a bit of inner peace today.
.
"If one could deduce the nature of the Creator from a study of creation, it would appear that He has an inordinate fondness for beetles." -- evolutionary biologist J B S Haldane, (1892-1964)
