The Earth Shook
On a Tuesday a few weeks back, I was sitting in my office typing away, when my monitor suddenly started shaking. For a moment I thought I was getting a little too aggressive with the keyboard. But when I stopped typing, the shaking continued. And then got worse. I thought to myself, “What the HELL? Could we possibly be having an earthquake?” After leaving California, I never thought I’d have to deal with another earthquake again. I went into the hall to confirm that we were, indeed, having an earthquake and calmly asked my office-mates, “Hey, are we having an earthquake?” My question was met with several panicked expressions and a rush of people headed for the closest exist. As one man passed me (worldly belongings in hand), he shouted “I don’t know, but I’m not staying here! Everyone should leave!”
Now, I’ve obviously been in my fair share of earthquakes. And I know that the cardinal rule in an earthquake is to take cover under a desk and protect your head and neck. One should NOT rush into a crowded street surrounded by skyscrapers and run the risk of death-by-falling-object. But I didn’t want to be the only one in an empty office, so down the stairs I went. When I got out into the street, it was sheer pandemonium:
After about 30 minutes, when the owner of the building decided it was safe to re-enter, we all returned to work.
The Winds Blew, the Rains Fell
Three days later, Hurricane Irene was on track to hit New York almost dead-on. In preparation for the storm, I headed out at lunch to stock up on batteries and candles. It immediately became apparent that every other person on the island of Manhattan had the same idea. Every store within a 5 block radius of my office was sold out of batteries, flashlights, battery-operated radios, etc. Naturally, I called Jeff in a panic and told him to buy batteries and a new flashlight on his way home from school, despite the fact that we apparently own two, high powered flashlights with new batteries. But of course every store on the Upper West Side was also sold out of batteries, flashlights, battery-operated radios, etc. We decided to meet at home after work and pick up enough provisions to survive the storm: wine, junk food, cookies, quinoa, bottled water and wine. When we got to Fairway, the line was literally out the door.
Too impatient to deal with the line and crowds at Fairway, we headed to Trader Joe’s, hoping the line would be shorter. Wrong. The line to get into the grocery store was out the door, around the corner and down the block. So back to Fairway we went. Fighting the crowds, we gathered our supplies and got out of there as quickly as possible.
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| The line outside Trader Joe's |
The next day—“hurricane day”—we were joined by our friend, Kate, and hunkered down for the storm. As Irene worked its way up the East Coast towards New York City, I began to panic that we didn’t have enough water or food. To ease my concerns, Jeff filled up every container we had with water and cooked a pot of quinoa big enough for us to subsist on for a month. He also taped the windows to prevent the glass from shattering. Like a good Marine, he also developed an “evacuation plan” in the event the windows blew out. And made us rehearse the plan several times.
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| Cali was very concerned about Irene |
In the end, New York City missed the worst of the storm. While we were up part of the night due to strong winds and heavy rain, we didn’t lose power, the windows didn’t shatter and we didn’t have to employ the evacuation plan.
Mother Nature, you’re going to have to do a lot worse to defeat the Muellers. Wait, perhaps I shouldn’t tempt her . . . winter is just around the corner . . .
