...and I feel fine!

Hey, I'm the first and only person in the library! Odd.

If it weren't full of staff people, I'd wonder if the Cylons attacked or something. The Rapture. Or possibly Winter Came. The Pax! Ice-Nine! Or what was the name of the flu in The Stand...? One of those things.

So the weather is once again behaving itself, like a well-trained dog, instead of the out-of-control-gorilla it occasionally morphs into. Just to remind us -- and itself, probably -- of what it is actually capable of! But cars are once more charging around as though the earth exploded into being millions of years ago just in order to provide them with lanes to travel in. What a piece of work is man!

Speaking of oddities of this sort (kind of), yesterday was a day of regular mail delivery, and yet no one in the whole apartment building got any mail yesterday. I was sitting and watching the mail carrier go up and down the street -- pushing her little cart and going up and down people's steps -- and when she got to our steps she paused for a few moments, and then rolled on by. !!! Nobody, of the sixteen people who live there, got so much as an ad for pizza addressed to Resident. Bizarre!

In spite of these obvious signs of the end of the world, unless the third sign occurs (because things like this always happen in threes, right?) I'm going to go on about my tiny little life and enjoy my day off in my beloved city!


So I guess some people's holidays go all the way to Monday -- Monday the fourth of January. I was assuming that traffic and all would go back to normal this weekend -- but no. Still crowds of people clearly enjoying themselves, still very few cars going anywhere except shopping malls, and still deathly quiet in the mornings.

Except for this morning! I got up at six as I always do, and was drinking coffee in my chair, when I heard a sound like faint and far-off crying. I listened hard, since I never want to be a person who says to themselves, "Gee, that sounds like someone being murdered. Guess I should turn up the sound on my movie."

 I couldn't pinpoint it, and I went out to the hallway to listen. Nope. Returned to my chair and my cup, and then heard something again. I went to the bathroom window and looked out. Still very dark out at six-thirty, but there are streetlights, and I could see and hear the young woman very well. Drunk, angry and really demanding. She was crying in loud howls, on her cell phone, and yelling,


"Please! Please, please, plea-ea-ea-ease! I know I didn't! I will next time, I PROMISE! I know I promised last time, but this time I will! I PROMISE! No, no, no! You can't, you can't, please, please! Ohhhh, boo-hooo-hoo....."

It was very cold outside, twenty-eight by my little thermometer, and she had clearly been out all night. I watched as she stamped her feet in furious despair at whoever was being so firm on the phone. She was wearing knee-high shaggy fur boots, light-colored fur that really caught the streetlights. Loud sobbing commenced. I opened the window.

"Hey," I yelled. "Do you need any help?"

She whirled around to face the building.

"FUCK! YOU!" she screamed.


I closed the window.


Happy New Year!