Life, it's been said, is one damn thing after the other.

After I got back home from Monday Night Zazen, after dropping my snake-bit cat off with the vet for the night, the mother of all thunderstorms, a violent cold-weather front, ripped through Atlanta. It hit my neighborhood around 11:30 pm with winds gusting up to 60 mph, large hail, and ear-splitting thunder and lightening. Surprisingly, my power didn't go off except for one 10-second surge, and when my roof didn't blow off by midnight and no trees had fallen on my house, I went to bed thinking the worst had passed.

It had, but I awoke to a home without electricity. At some point during the night, a large tree had fallen across the road, taking the power lines down with it. I fumbled around that morning the best I could, and went off to work assuming that power company crews will have restored my power by the time I got back home that night.

As it turns out, I had gotten off easy. Tragically, the storm killed 7 people in Georgia alone and caused an estimated $32 Million in damage. I saw trees down in many neighborhoods during my morning commute.

The good news was the vets called and told me that Izzy the cat was making a good recovery. They're pretty sure that it was a copperhead that bit him, and they had him on an IV drip all night, administering fluids and pain meds, but they saw no reason that I couldn't come pick him up at the end of the day, which I did after work yesterday. The bill was about $200 less than their "low-end" estimate, but still, at around $1,000, more than I was expecting to spend on feline care that week. Check-out took a while, and I didn't make it back home, dazed cat in tow, until a little after 8 pm. But too my disappointment, the tree was still down across the road and the power was still out. I unloaded the cat into a dark house and had to give him his medications (more pain killers and some antibiotics) by candlelight. Anyone who's ever tried to give a cat oral medications using a syringe can tell you that it's not an easy task even under the best of circumstances; the fact that Izzy's face was still swollen and sensitive and that I was taking on the task by candlelight only made it all the more, well, interesting.

I sat my evening zazen by candlelight as well, but after that couldn't really find anything to do all alone in a powerless house with an injured cat, so I grabbed a book (The Shobogenzo, of course) and went to the local Spanish cantina for some paella and cold cerveza to pass the time. When I finally went home, at close to midnight, the power had been restored (although the tree was still down), and judging by the flashing clocks, realized it had been turned on approximately 20 minutes after I had left.

So that brings me to today. I have electricity and Alabama Power crews were lending a hand here in Atlanta, carving up the fallen tree on my street. I was hoping to work off some of the tension of Izzy's trauma, the storm, the power loss, the veterinarian bill, and so forth by catching tonight's show by the dream-pop band Warpaint at The Earl but saw, surprisingly for a late show on a week night, that the concert was sold out. Despite my disappointment about missing a second show this week (in all the excitement Tuesday, I forgot that The Pains of Being Pure At Heart were playing The Earl that night), I was still glad to see such a good reception for a band like Warpaint, who play what's been called a "lilting, fragile sound that recalls both the dreamy shoegazer indie pop of the nineties and Stevie Nicks at her most mystical. Despite the sweetness of the group's harmonies and guitars, there's always something vaguely sinister just below the surface" (The New Yorker). No less an authority than Justin Timberlake said Warpaint's "chilling music is meant to be listened between giant, tingling swigs of scotch in a dark corner or while lying in a empty field by the highway in the middle of the night watching the headlights flash by." After that, I can't resist a video:

Just one damn thing after another.