Thursday, October 12, 2006

Where have you gone Mr. OGinson?

So anyway, my audiobook ended sooner than I expected and I was caught book-less on my train ride home last night. It was later than usual since the second class I teach each week goes until six o’clock and the next train doesn’t leave until six-forty. Looking for a way to avoid interacting with my fellow riders who had no intention of interacting with me, and feeling just a wee bit guilty for ignoring this blog for far too long, I pulled out my Blackberry and attempted a mobile entry. My thumbs began to cramp as I entered amazing thought after amazing thought stopping only occasionally to “save draft” as the entry field filled to capacity. It was undoubtedly an epiphanous revelation because now, looking back, I cannot remember those amazing thoughts. I do know that when I moved into my neighborhood two years ago, I was told that there were more than 75 years left until the next hundred-year flood. I am glad I will be dead by then. My thought was to stitch together all of those Blackberry “save draft” entries from my home computer and then post my amazing thoughts in one, dare I say it, amazing blog post. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that, after all, nothing had been saved. All those amazing thoughts gone – forever lost in the ether. Imagine my dismay when, a week ago Monday evening, the power went out some time before nine-thirty p.m. and water began to trickle under my basement door. As I thumbed those amazing thoughts into my Blackberry, my throat was sore from three hours of lecturing. The topic of the week was Methods of Property Transfer at Death and we had eventually found our way to various statutory restrictions on inheritance. When the topic of the Slayer Statute came up, I broke down and told them the story of Adelle; not the feature length unabridged version you, dear friends, are being treated to here but only the Reader’s Digest version. That shut them up. Imagine this image, forever burned on my memory: Mrs. OG and I in the basement, the small flashlight in my mouth as we broomed water towards the drain when suddenly, as if kicked in by a storm trooper, the basement door slams open and a chest high wall of water comes crashing in. It eventually settled to calf-height and was all but drained by one o’clock in the a.m. but, after getting the door shut and bolted, Mrs. OG and I baled water from the outside stairwell until after midnight while lightning erupted in the skies above us. Like I said, I am glad I will be dead when that really big flood comes back around.