(no subject)

Over where I am in southern Brooklyn we are starting to get pretty strong gusts and loud wind. This is a LARGE storm and I guess that I'm going to be stuck inside all day today... the low pressure is making me pretty headachey and I feel like I am the one person in Brooklyn who didn't take the opportunity to stock up on liquor.

I have to say that I am pretty angry at the chain restaurants and drugstores and Wal-Marts that are staying open as long as possible even after mass transit has been shut down, even when it's becoming clear that this is not a very safe situation to go out in. It's not new for service industries to treat their employees horribly, but I feel like it's getting worse in terms of expanding and expanding service hours just so you can sell more stuff to people, no matter what the cost to the people who work there.

A story by Meaghan

"I don't tell my roommate about all the times I've almost lost or killed his cat, so he better not be following you," she just said.

("Almost killed" is an exaggeration. She accidentally let the cat sniff a lily.)

There are three reliable ways to get Meaghan's roommate's cat Ripley to come out when doing an Accounting Of The Cats.

1 - to open the door, because she thinks that her owner is home.
2 - to pour a glass of milk
3 - to meow.

So, Meaghan was unable to find Ripley, so she opened and closed the door, and then walked around the apartment meowing, with a glass of milk in her hand. Ripley was nowhere to be found. Could she have escaped through the window where the air conditioner was installed? Well, she'd done so once before. The window had been secured since then, but there was still a small opening, and it wasn't inconceivable...

But if Ripley was all by herself out on the street, in a hurricane...

So she went outside and she stood on the street, holding a glass of milk, meowing.

Ripley failed to turn up, so at last Meaghan went inside. She opened the door to her roommate's room and there was Ripley, sitting on a box.

CATS.

Status update

This is just to say that Meaghan and I have been very very lucky so far, with the storm (hopefully) passing to the west of us without much in the way of personal damage. It will probably be tomorrow before we know the extent of how bad things are in NYC, New Jersey, and the other affected areas, but here and now, everything is OK.