Emergency Preparedness

After asking the editor permission, which I don't normally do, and assuring her that my feelings would not be hurt if she said no, I told her for my column I wanted to write about going to the ER from a hotel room and how I relinguished my own judgment way too soon. In somewhat a surprise  response, she loved the idea. Prior to this, I have thought about what I would take if I had to evacuate my apartment in a hurry. My computer is first WITH power chord. Then I start in on clothes -- how many underpants and the problem of having enough withou feeliing I need a truck to carry them arouned.

This week, Marilynn told me a crane collapsed on her street and hit a gas main and they had to leave quickly. They decided to go to her grown daughter's apartment with a husband and two kids in tow. She said it never occured to her to bring clothes. What? Luckily, they were able to get back in the next day.

Give some thought to what you'd take and where it is in your place in case an emergency comes calling. Here's the house on Marilyn's street wih the crane.

GRATITUDE!!!!!

I dodged two big-time bullets today, and I am so grateful.

First, I splashed club soda on my keyboard... not two drops, not one dtop -- but enough so that a napkin I grabbed was soaked. Two hours later: absolutely no damage to the keyboard. I really can't believe it.

Then I interview this guy. He's squished me into his schedule and we do a formal interview for about 35 minutes. We hang up. I go to close the file. What am I thinking?? I happily click on "don't save" -- I don't know what the ef I was thinking! I'm crafting in my head how I explain my stupidity, not to mention having to redo the interview. It was semi-technical so I really couldn't fake it.

I had a vague memory of having done this before on a newer computer -- and played around just trying anything... then I see something like "versions" and the last version of this file was closed, but not saved, at 3:37 pm... then those blessed words, "Do you want to restore this document?" and I click on yes, and there it was in all its glory.

Only problm was it was a weird format -- columns, but I didn't give a damn... the words were there. I carefully saved it and when I went to reopen it, it was formatted normally. I feel incredibly lucky today.

Two Language Gripes

Here are two misuse of language which bother me more than they should.

The first is "The proof is in the pudding." NO, no, no. The line is "The proof of the pudding is in the tasting" and it's degenerated into the proof is in the pudding and it annoys me every time.

Believe it or not, I heard this one twice today: It's a doggy dog world. No, no, no. It's a dog eat dog world.

Two Observations

It's so cold that the city has had to bring in icebreakers to keep the Husdon River open.

I have zero interest in Justin Bieber; however I heard a celebrity say recently that if you are a celebrity having your mugshot taken you should always smile. This guy was saying how a mugshot will survive forever and be shown forever. Thought that was interesting -- and true. Justin must have been given that same advice because he looks like one happy kid in that mugshot.

MORE SCATTERED THOUGHTS

I am turning into a bear. All  I want to do is hiberante. The cold, cold weather has no end in sight, and we're supposed to get more snow. Weather guys aren't saying how much yet. As for work, it's rolling along.

Snowing on the Upper West Side

via Barb shooting out to Columbus Avenue

More Snow Day Photos

I had to add one of my own -- and I opened the garden door and stuck my hand out. This is at 8:06pm and I thought the snow had stopped, but it's still coming down hard.

 

and staying in New York, we/ll go from the East Side to the West Side where Barb is out for a stroll so Boopers can do his bidness:

 

 

Below is the block by the Museum of Natural HIstory:

 

You can barely see Boopers in his little blue sweater right in front.

 

And now back to DC where Mary's screened in porch is being snowed on. I know all of the furtniture is indoor/outdoor, but I think of it more as another room, not part of the outside

What's this you ask? Well, Mary claims she did a snow angel and if we would only study this picture, we'd see it. As for me, I give her full props for getting down and doing an angel. I'd get down and I don't know if I'd make it up without a crane.