Quagmire

This is not a quagmire.


This is a quagmire.

It's my back yard.

Tonite we experienced The Mother of All Storms, which for two hours knocked out every light in the little College town where I live. Fortunately, all of the students are out of town on Winter Break, having completed Finals last week. For those of us who live and work here year-round, we had the opportunity to check our Emergency Preparedness.

No duct tape nor plastic sheeting was necessary, just a couple of candles and perhaps a few oil lamps got me through an otherwise uneventful (I thought) evening. I spent it in my nest, reading Jeff Cooper's "Garganuan Gunsite Gossip II" by the light of paired oil lamps.

I had dozed off about 9pm when I heard a knock at my front door. It was my neighbor, walking the property with a flashlight, calling to check on me and remark that "Well, we won't have to worry about that tree in your back yard any more!"

Huh?

"You mean you didn't notice?" he asked? He told me to look out my window and walked his light back through the gate.

The 25' Fir tree outside my north-facing picture window showed nothing more than a gnarled mass of roots. The ground was saturated with a week of rain, a sodden mass with standing water, and the two days of strong wind had finally managed to blow the tree completely down, leaving only the root system showing from my viewpoint. Fortunate it was that the wind had vortexted in the maze of houses, blowing NORTH away from my picture rather than some direction which would have brought it crashing into my duplex windows.

My night would have been considerably less comfortable in almost any other circumstance, with that strong wind blowing rain through my picture window.

As it is, we spent a couple of inconvenient hours in the dark. The only other damage (if it may be called that) was the cover was blown away from where it covered my "most expensive lawn ornament in town", a 1987 Porsche 944 which has been resident beside my driveway for the past year since I blew first gear and had it towed home while I saved up to get it repaired. Yes, I'm still saving. No, I have no idea when it will get fixed; I always have something more immediate to do with my money, such as pay the rent, buy Christmas presents, and go to IPSC matches.

You will notice that the view toward the street doesn't show much. The camera flash didn't go far, and the lights which usually make this front part of my yard and driveway illuminated are all out.

I admit, it doesn't take much to make my night life more exciting than usual. But we could all have done without this kind of excitement.

Note to self: tomorrow, go buy more lamp oil and extra batteries for the flashlights. I've checked my supplies, and I have no batteries or oil which are not already in the lamps.

How are YOUR "Emergency Preparedness" supplies holding out?