Journal of a Sabbatical

January 14, 1999

single digits

There was another earthquake this morning. The temperature is in the single digits. It has been snowing all night without accumulating much. The earthquake was 2.2 on the Richter scale, an aftershock to Sunday's 2.7. I missed Sunday's earthquake because I was in Rhode Island, but this morning's woke me up at 1:15. I didn't quite realize it was an earthquake. It was the same shaky disoriented feeling I had during a much larger middle of the night earthquake in Ecuador. I forgot about it until I got up this morning and heard it on the news. My brain clicked: oh, that's what that was!

The temperature was still in the single digits by the time I went to Starbucks for coffee. I sat at the counter with my jacket on. The baristas were wearing fleece vests under their green aprons. There were few customers, none of the regulars. The manager said it was -2 degrees when he came to work in the morning and he wanted to know if we'd hit double digits yet. Nope. In fact, it never made it to double digits during the day.

The snow continued at the same snails pace for hours and hours. I kept hearing weather reports of how southeastern Massachusetts was getting pounded. They were giving lists of school closings and such. Here it was just a flake or two every twenty minutes. That lasted until about 5:00 when it really started to snow and accumulate just like a normal snow storm. I'm glad I'm not trying to drive home from Framingham tonight. Last night was bad enough.

Nancy called to tell me the Newport paper had a front page story about Sunday's dog rescue. The guy who fell through the ice saving the dog is fine. Turns out he is a navy guy stationed in Newport. They reunited him with the dog for a picture. The dog's fine too. I'm glad to hear that because I kind of felt like I needed to have closure or something. Nancy said she'd save the article for me. It mentions that a motorist called 911 on a cell phone - that would be me. Wish I could have been heroic like the young navy guy, but somehow knowing when to dial 911 and not risk my life seems like a sign of maturity.

Zsolt only called once today, so either the new computer is working fine or it has burst into flames and exploded and he's afraid to tell me. He did say that he called the Microsoft support number about the registration program and they weren't too helpful. I don't understand how you can ship something that core dumps and gives an "illegal instruction" message registering the software. In the olden days quality assurance never would have let that ship. Not Bill Gates' olden days, the olden days of computers when software manufacturers actually had to make the software work because they had competition. Anyway, for now things are going smoothly: the e-mail cometh, the file transfers from the old computer plod along.

Aside from a brief trip to the grocery store and lunch at Bertucci's, I spent the afternoon and early evening holed up working on the MRFRS newsletter, reading Civilzation and the Limpet and listening to my favorite Chuckchi shamanic chants on the CD player. Wilbur hates the Chuckchi chants but loves curling up on my chest when I'm in the recliner, so it was a dilemma for him. Sitting on my chest won out.