TODAY’S WORRY
Today I meant to write a great entry about religion or politics or something important. But, alas, it was not meant to be. Many eerie things happened on an unnatural (shiver) Saturday. And it was over 90 degrees so the shiver wasn’t from the cold. First, we were making the bed around 7 AM. Really, that’s not true. We were straightening the covers – an act between being utterly slovenly and being anal. There was a noise, windows rattling and the house creaking. John said that the wind had really picked up. That seemed weird since the wind doesn’t usually pick up until the afternoon around here. Laughingly, I said, “If we were in California, I would think that this is an earthquake.” Well, what do you know. Later that afternoon when I looked at the USGS site, I found that there had been a quake nearby at 7:02 AM. Not too big, just 3.6 but maybe large enough for a hypersensitive Californian.
Second in our eerie events chronicle, we went to play tennis. Obviously, the magnetic field of the earth had been shifted because I played really, really badly. Okay, mostly I suck at tennis, but it’s always fun to blame it on something.
Next, from the tennis court, we noticed smoke over the southwest sky. Ominous. The lightning from a recent sort-of-storm had ignited brush over toward Motoqua near the Shivwitz Indian Reservation. (I am not kidding here, the Shivwitz are a Paiute tribe and not a lost tribe of Israel.) Plumes of smoke were rising disturbingly near by.
Finally, the electical power started flickering early in the evening. Off and on, and then the alarm system went berserk, screaming into the night. Finally the electricity went off for the final time. Killed the screaming alarm. Quiet, dimness, oh no, what are we going to do about dinner?! We had a reservation for dinner at a new restaurant that I was planning on reviewing. They called us canceling our table. They had no power as well. What does modern man do in this situation where you cannot open the refrigerator (because around here it gets hot fast) and we need to eat? Although we kept on doing things like looking at the clock on the microwave and turning on the light in the bathroom, we were up to the dinner emergency.
Okay, look in the pantry – Light coconut milk, B &M baked beans, dry pasta, Cheerios, etc. Hard to imagine dinner. Finally, we decided we could heat a pot of water on the grill, cook pasta and make a sauce of parsley flakes, garbanzo beans, canned tuna and olive oil. Add a little salt and pepper and a few chile flakes, and, voila, dinner. Top all this off with a bottle of red wine and, there you have it, dinner.
So we showed that given a loss of electricity modern man can manage. All you need is an outdoor grill and a well-stocked pantry. I am feeling so self-sufficient!
PS Later Saturday night – the fire still rages and we can smell the smoke. The nearby town of Gunlock was evacuated this morning. The sky is dark with smoke to the west. Although we are not threatened, fire in the West is a scary thing. And it is only June.