Between Disasters

Hurricane Irene is about to knock our power out.

I write this with near certainty, partly because the media weathercasters have told us to expect it, as has our local power company via robo-call. But mostly I know this because we lose power pretty much any time there’s a wind gust or a rain burst. It’s mid-afternoon now, and overnight tonight we’re due for a least three inches of rain and wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour.

I won’t name our power company, but I will say its acronym seems to stand for "Piss-poor Entity Provokes Consumer Outrage."

Anyway, so, I’m typing fast here. Actually I’m not, because I type with one finger and have to look at the keyboard while doing so, and if I try to type fast I make a lot of typos that then must be cleaned up. Which kind of defeats the purpose of typing fast. More importantly, however, typing faster would force me to think faster, which history has proven is a non-starter.

It is accurate to say that I’m trying to write and post this entry before the inevitable power outage shuts down our PC for God knows how many days. Before that happens, I'd like to recap the first blow in the D.C. region's natural disaster one-two punch this week.

Tuesday afternoon at about 2 o’clock I was eating my lunch behind my closed office door when a rumbling commenced that suggested one of those big storage chests in which my employer ships things to conventions was rolling by in the hallway. Either that or someone was rushing to get to a Weight Watchers meeting, or possibly a Biggest Loser audition.

Then my windows started rattling the way they do when the window-washers sometimes crash their raised platform into them. The rattling quickly intensified, and the floor began shaking as if if a CSX train had jumped the nearby tracks and somehow made its way the 50 yards or so to my building’s foundation. Because I am a college graduate, at that point I figured out what was happening: The Biggest Loser audition was being held in the building, and jumping jacks were involved.

No, what I realized was that we’d just experienced an earthquake. I emerged from my office to find coworkers standing around in the hallway, looking more startled than upset. Earthquakes you can actually feel are unusual in the DC area, although one of my very first blog entries made note of a lesser one we’d had last summer. We were instructed to evacuate the building while it was inspected for damage, and assemble near some tennis courts a block away.

Nervous parents called their family members while smug, childless idiots like me said things like, “This doesn’t seem like a big deal” and longed for the rest of their Swiss cheese sandwich. People who’d lived in California predictably pronounced our seismic event—a 5.8 magnitude quake, smartphones revealed—a sorry excuse for an earthquake. Their dismissive tone conveyed that they had carried delicate glassware or maybe performed painstaking heart surgery during worse. One woman found the quake quite exhilarating, as if she’d unexpectedly been kissed by the cute guy on whom she had a secret crush, and now hoped to be goosed gently on the ass by a moderate aftershock.

Anyway, we hadn’t been standing out there for more than 10 or 15 minutes when we got the all-clear to return inside. That bespoke to me a rigorous inspection regimen consisting of our maintenance team finding no cracks in the walls big enough to stick an arm into. But, whatever. Again, I wasn’t in the slightest concerned that our modest and brief (20-second?) temblor had done any notable damage. So, I had no trepidation about going back inside—or staying inside until proceding to my scheduled 4 p.m. haircut, even though we were told we could take the rest of the day off.

(An aside: I’ve delighted in the opportunity the past few days to employ the word “temblor.” It has long intrigued me—reading and sounding, as it does, like an odd bastardization of “tremblor.” I mean, it’s all about things trembling, is it? The word also, for me, hints at "Simon Templar," the stylish rogue played by Roger Moore on TV’s The Saint in the 1960s. Temblor, temblor, temblor, temblor! OK, I’m good now.)

Upon returning to my office, I scanned it for signs of destruction or disarray. At first I saw absolutely nothing: no broken glass, no pictures on the floor, no reference books loosed from the shelves. And my sandwich was right where I’d left it, thank goodness. But then, as I looked up, atop the bookcase, I indeed saw evidence of the devastating Earthquake of 2011.

Gamera was down.

In the unlikely event you are not familiar with Gamera’s body of work, he’s a giant, fire-spitting flying turtle who battled various other monsters in a series of low-budget Japanese films of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, I believe he literally was embodied by a Japanese man in a turtle suit. Nevertheless, he makes for a fine plastic action figure. So, when I happened to find myself in a Tokyo toy store in 2008, I felt compelled to purchase plastic versions of both him and Godzilla as mementos of my trip. (This despite the fact that each, naturally, bore a “Made in China” label.)

Full disclosure requires me to reveal that, although Gamera and Godzilla face off against each other atop my office bookcase, they actually were the creations of rival movie studios and never fought each other on film. (Strangely, no visitor to my office ever has called me on that.) Anyway, what I noticed when I looked up there was that although Godzilla remained erect—steadied by a tail that functions as a third leg—Gamera, who normally stands on his hind legs, was lying face-down. Yes, a mighty radiation-mutated reptile, felled by Mother Nature’s fury.

When I arrived home that evening, Lynn inventoried a similar swath of earthquake-related devastation: Trinkets from a wall-mounted shadowbox scattered on the guest room floor and, in one case, gnawed by our grateful dog. In our sunroom, a TV remote on the floor. In the living room, an unframed artwork that had been standing atop a cabinet, now lying flat. Oh, the humanity!

Truthfully, this might a case where we assume everything’s fine until our cracked and weakened roof caves in during the winter’s first measurable snowfall. Who knows? The point is, we quite handily survived the earthquake.

Meanwhile, however, the wind is kicking up outside the window, and the rain has turned more intense. Soon it will be nightfall, and that’s when Irene is supposed to be at her worst here. Power loss is all but inevitable, and we’ve already experienced the destruction of one of our cars by a fallen tree under far better conditions. Which is to say, I’d better get this account posted.

At least we’ve got water, nonperishable food, a couple of powerful lanterns and plenty of reading material in the house. And if I start feeling bummed out after several days of no lights, hot water or air conditioning, I've still got than funny word to cheer me up.

“Temblor.” Ha!