Happiness Is a Warm Pussy

SNOWBALL EARTH - The worst of Ice Storm 05 has passed in Atlanta, and temperatures are slowly returning to their seasonal average, the snow is melting, and the power and cable have returned to my home.

Although the lights, heat and cable all did go out here, I wasn't around for the worst of it. L. called me Saturday morning, and invited me over for dinner and the night. I wasn't sure if I could get down the driveway and out of here, but I took her up on her offer anyway figuring that where there's a will, there's a way. So, Saturday afternoon, while the lights were flickering on and off (and annoyingly knocking my computer repeatedly off line), I began my escape.

I went out and started the car to defrost the windshields and windows, and while it was running, I attempted to scrape the ice off the driveway. I don't own a snow shovel; there's no reason to own one in Atlanta - I wouldn't even know where to start looking even if I wanted to buy one - so I tried scraping the ice off the driveway with a rake. This actually worked better than you might think - the ice was still slushy, and the precipitation at that hour was coming down more as rain than snow or sleet, softening things up. But it seemed that although I was able to move the slush around a little, it would almost immediately re-freeze into an even-slicker sheet of ice.

By this time, the car was all defrosted, and since I figured that conditions were only going to get worse before they got any better, I hopped in and glided the car safely down to the bottom of the driveway and left it parked on the road while I showered and got ready for my evening at L.'s.

The lights were still flickering as I left around 4:30 p.m., and many of the traffic lights were out as I drove to L.'s. In fact, several blocks along Peachtree Road in Midtown were without power. However, when I got to L.'s, her place was lit and warm and comfortable and inviting.

We had salmon for dinner and watched Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" on DVD and Mike Judge's "Office Space" on VCR. It was my second time seeing "Spirited Away," but the movie is so visually stunning that I enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

The morning was spent like all good Sunday mornings should be - slowly, with lots of coffee, the Sunday New York Times, and cats. Karma got into the spirit of the day by using the newspaper as blankets to keep warm. Happiness is a warm pussy.

On the way home, I stopped at Barnes & Noble and bought a bunch of books: "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse" by Jared Diamond; "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell; "An End to Suffering" by Pankaj Mishra (reviewed here); and Michael Crichton's "State of Fear." One of my New Year's pledges was to make more fun of Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, Putin and Crichton. Although I've been living up to my promises on Bush and Rice, I figured I might as well gather up some ammunition before taking on Crichton (and Rumsfeld, Cheney and Putin only need to be patient - their time will come).

There were downed trees all over Buckhead and Collier Hills as I drove home, and tree-service trucks, utility repairmen and other emergency services all over the place. When I got home at around 4:00 p.m., the electricity was on, but it was obvious that it had been off for several hours, probably even overnight. Although the heat was running (with the thermostat set at 72), it was only 62 degrees in the house when I got home, and the cable was out, meaning I had neither television, internet access nor non-cellular telephone. By 7:30, however, the cable was restored and everything was once again copacetic.