The guy next to me on the trans-bay commuter bus is clearly working Very, Very Hard. He is hunched over his laptop like a bomb disposal technician, typing furiously and occasionally cracking his knuckles in a let’s-get-down-to-brass-tacks fashion. He just shook his head vigorously from side to side and made a “hurrnnnnh” noise. I expect he will soon break into a chorus of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad.”
Year: 2018
Hurricane hubris
We were flying home from Vermont about five years ago and our flight from DC to RDU was cancelled because of a big storm “I don’t remember which”. I had to fly out to San Francisco the next day for work and decided to rent a car and drive us all home. I picked a Jeep something-or-other because of four-wheel drive and ground clearance.
A few hours later we were on I-85 in Virginia, in a hundred-mile corridor of trees, stuck motionless while two people from the highway department cleared downed timber from the road with a chainsaw and front loader. We couldn’t go forward. Going back was no safer.
The pines all around us were swaying more violently than I’d ever seen. I looked in the back seat at my sleeping boy, knowing I could do nothing to protect him if one of those trees fell on us.
This remains the worst decision I’ve ever made. I’m on the verge of tears as I write this, remembering the shame and helplessness I felt.
Please be careful, my friends. Nothing is more important than keeping yourself and your loved ones safe.
On the long, weary stumble from the airplane door to immigration in Bangalore’s Kempegowda airport, the moving walkway takes you past a large room behind plate glass windows, where about 50 serious-looking men and women sit in ergonomic chairs behind multiple monitors, engrossed in some sort of important airport business. Putting them on display is very smart. You immediately get a sense of competence, order and safety, and a visual reminder that Bangalore is a world tech capital.
From eight years ago:
On further reflection, the reporter must have said that food banks from all over California are cooperating to help with high demand from fire evacuees. This makes a lot more sense than the way I heard it, that they are cooperating to help hide a man from fire evacuees.
There’s a lovely family having breakfast at a table near mine. I’m guessing it’s Mom, Dad, college-student son and his girlfriend. I can only assume they must have been discussing genetics or phrenology or something similarly skull-related because at one point they all started rubbing one another’s heads in a methodical fashion. It was a little odd but mostly very sweet.