Friday, April 9, 1999

Archive - 9 April 1999

Ack! I'm down to only three puzzles in my file. I need to get some more! (I have plenty more; I just haven't put them in the file yet.) The question is - is it worth it? Do you care about the puzzle of the day? Maybe it should be the puzzle of the week? Eventually, I'm going to run out of puzzles, or start running into rephrasings of the same puzzles. What should I do when that happens? Any ideas? You could send me puzzles that you know, but you never write...

I went to Anita's baby shower last night. No, I'm not wanting a baby right now. Anita's husband's sister-in-law brought her toddler with her to the shower, and I was turned off again. Matt asked me when I got home whether we ladies had discussed our own reproductive plans, and whether I got any sympathy for the plight of being married to a man who doesn't want children. Actually, the answer was no. I was sortof surprised, myself, but everyone there seemed to think that either I was in agreement with Matt, in which case that was our business; or that Matt would change his mind eventually.

Anyway, I was proud of myself. I didn't have any cheesecake. I didn't have any candy. I only had a couple of crackers and about three of those little tiny quiches. (I adore those things.) Mostly, I ate a lot of veggies. And some of the best, sweetest strawberries I've ever had in my life. So I stayed - mostly - on my diet. Which is good, because I'd had lunch at the Olive Garden with my mom, and that used up most of my points for the day.

Wow. There's a very impressive-looking thunderstorm rolling in. Despite the fact that it would give Jeremy screaming fits, I sortof hope it knocks the power out for a while. Any excuse not to work is a good excuse not to work, in my book! (But let me save here, just in case...) I love thunderstorms. I don't know if I was ever scared of them, but my mom loves them, too. When my parents built the house they live in now, they put on an enclosed porch. Mom spends most of her time out there, primarily because she can't smoke in the house. But I can remember sitting on the porch with her during thunderstorms. We'd turn off the lights and watch for lightning forks, counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. When the brunt of the storm hit, we'd watch the trees whip around in the wind and the rain streak out of the sky. They're beautiful.

Where I live is one of the safest places in the world, weather-wise. I've lived here my whole life, and never once seen a hurricane. (Though about once a year it looks like we'll get one. But they always catch the jetstream just off the coast of North Carolina and change course.) Every five years or so, conditions will be right for tornadoes, but the ground here isn't flat enough for them to get very big or last more than a few seconds. I've never seen one myself, though I've seen the damage they do - trees that look like they'd exploded and an aluminum shed crumpled like tinfoil. But only once in my life has anyone been killed by one. (Which is incredible when you consider that we don't have basements to hide in.) The jetstream keeps the weather fairly mild, if rainy and humid. (I don't think of this area as rainy, actually. It takes friends who have lived in other places to call attention to the rain here. I hate the humidity, but when I visit arid places I get nosebleeds.) What other weather patterns are dangerous? We don't get tidal waves or monsoons or flash floods.

Of course, we're pretty well bracketed by military installations, including the largest Navy shipyard in the country, and we're only a couple hundred miles from the nation's capitol, so this will be a very unsafe place to be if war ever makes it over here. But as far as the weather goes, it's pretty dull. (I like it that way. I don't like to be afraid of things. Thunderstorms are beautiful.)

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