When I type “snapshot”, I really mean it, and this one with the Lx5 through a dirty window. Nonetheless, it is about 20 minutes past the taking of the picture and things are finally starting to blow around Out There, although nothing like the Atlantic coast with the ocean wild and surfing ashore.
I feel I am doing as I should be doing in this age and peculiar day — dutifully drinking a rum and coke and sitting irresponsibly at my workstation.
From time to time, now with a flashlight, I step out to make sure the hanging baskets are not hovering sideways and the bistro table with its concrete and stone surface and iron frame has not decided to pull a Stephen King on me and made a move like the Mangler’s.
It’s not anything in my space that has me worried, if that, but the surrounding old tall trees, perhaps too the landlord’s last investment in decent roofing.
Oh, I hear the town’s civil defense siren — ah, a short go-around, not sustained.
Perhaps it was just a test of the local civil defense system.
Well, I enjoy atmosphere, and this is Lear’s weather, but spare me disaster: the last was a fire that destroyed the apartment building in which I had been living for 15 years. That provided incentive, I guess, for my moving, in general, and other variables suggested I move here to the eastern edge of western Maryland, so that I could find myself typing in a corner of a building in the direct path of a hurricane.
It was true for a few hours.
Now the latest Intellicast “storm tracker” says Hurricane Sandy’s eye has found the Amish country, central Pennsylvania, about sixty miles east, more attracting than floating over South Mountain and setting a spell above my head.
Darn.
I’ll have to settle for a slice of the map blob representing the 75-mph wind band.
Nonetheless, bring it, says I: A man should be able to brag something after the Big Storm!
Besides, now and then I enjoy camping in and reading by flashlight.
Should the night pass without drama greater than the roar of the wind, I’ll have embarked on the first leg of a long winter’s retreat involving the library — so many books, so much less time — and the teasing curse of blank sheets of foolscap and digital equivalents.
P.S. 8:03 p.m., latest weather report states top wind speed predicted for my location is 46-mph, right now, as if. I feel so, so . . . downgraded . . . .
J. S. Oppenheim -- All Together 
In our Washington County neighborhood, we had three power poles go down in the wind. We were without power for 4 hours. Otherwise, no major damage. Just minor stuff like a grill knocked over. Since we are on an exposed hilltop, I feel fortunate.
Sorry to hear about the power outage. This morning, I thought we were done, but water service quit about an hour ago. It’s back now. Our basic lifestyles involve a lot of moving parts in infrastructure, from water intake or well pumping stations to wires and telephone poles,and they are all very small potatoes by Mother Nature’s standards, especially when she slips fractured rock beneath us or whips up a hurricane. Of such treats, the one I most dread here would be a tornado.
You are so right. I just published a short, short story on my blog about a failure of infrastructure last night. We take so much for granted. I wonder if I could survive as the pioneers did — truly roughing it. 🙂
For a while, we would be saddled with greater expectations. 🙂 For dabbling, of course, we have wilderness and trail clubs.