The Apocalypse cometh

Tuesday was a beautiful day here in Boston, despite being a bit too chilly for my emotional comfort for an August afternoon. Stuck in a windowless office for the better part of the day, I decided to stretch the ol' legs after a lunch spent bent over my computer with a walk to the beach in South Boston. Turns out, while I was out enjoying the sunshine, an earthquake hit the east coast for the first time in a babillion years. Let me repeat that: an earthquake hit the east coast. Kind of.

When I got back to the office, completely unaware that anything was amiss, I was greeted by an excited gaggle of cubicle dwellers. The building was shaking. I was so scared. I need to call my mother. Never experienced anything like it. Naturally, I was all the wha? For realz? Ya'll sure it wasn't just that construction that's been going on outside? Maybe they dropped something ... large. Maybe it was Ted in his cubicle after a particularly questionable trip to Boloco.

So I did what any hard news junkie would do when confirming alleged stories: I checked Facebook. And hoo boy was Facebook's roof blown off with earthquake chatter. Don't even get me started about Twitter. Photos of the earthquake devastation were flying in from DC to NYC. The following content might not me suitable for young viewers:

Earthquake Devastation

photo by jmkinley

Clearly, people up and down the east coast were all shook up. LOLZ see what I did there?! Let's joke about disasters! Did you hear the one about the Gulf oil spill? But I will admit, it was all rightfully so. If I was sitting at my desk on the 32nd floor of a high rise in Philadelphia and the whole building started swaying, as I've heard they did, chances are I would have shit my pants. Heck, even if I was on the ground floor of my office building here in Boston and the room started shaking, I STILL probably would have shit my pants, assumed we were being attacked by terrorists, and called my mother to tell her I love her and please give my awesome record collection to my dear baby brother.

But to think, all that fuss and I didn't even notice. Gah knows I love a good national panic. And here I went and missed the whole goddamned east coast earthquake! My first shot at becoming a natural disaster survivor and I totally blew it. How am I ever going to demonstrate to the world my superior survival skills? I've been practicing my push ups, you know. Or how about my compassion for my fellow man when I risk my own life pulling other survivors from dangerous rubble? Who's going to take my picture? Who's going to interview me on CNN? What about my once-in-a-lifetime chance to say, "hey, d'jou feel that earthquake today? Gnarly, right?" GAH.

Granted, if I had to be anywhere when an earthquake hit, sitting with my feet in the sand ain't too bad of an option. But I digress.

Before the earthquake chatter could even die down, the east coast turned it's collective eyes south towards Hurricane Irene as the barrels towards us. Great. First a baby earthquake and now a hurricane. In the same week. It's the Apocalypse, ya'll!

Hurricane-tracking weather reports flash across the television and radio almost constantly in Boston. Coastal towns throughout Maryland, New Jersey, and New York are undergoing forced evacuation. Even New York City is pondering evacuation. New York City?! Now that's dramatic. People in my own town are boarding up their windows, dry-docking their boats, and stocking up on firewood.

Now, usually I respond to natural disaster warnings with sentiments ranging on the scale somewhere between meh and sighhhh. In the summer, we can also factor in the the weather is totally ruining my beach day. GOD, Irene. I only have so many beach days left! However, let's not forget that this happened last year too. New England was in a panic over Hurricane Earl, myself included. Granted, the majority of the region was worried about damage to home and property, and I was frantically checking the weekend forecast to see if my weekend plans of beaching were about to be ruined. Let us not forget that I spent the entire week in a feverish panic and then enjoyed myself a gorgeous weekend sipping Coronas on the beach. So this year, I'm not gonna let it get to me. I'm just going to sit back, relax, and let it all wash over us. If it rains, it rains. If that rain just so happens to be accompanied by 100 mph gusts of wind, well isn't that just swell. I'll probably be holed up in a bar somewhere with the rest of the town drunk before 2 p.m. And if it doesn't? Well then I will be where I always am on the weekends with my butt firmly planted in the sand. Also drunk before 2 p.m. So I can't really lose this weekend.

It's not predicted we'll be dealing with anything "catastrophic" but it does look like shit's about to get EXTREME.

Well guess what, Irene? You want to talk about extreme? LAST weekend, my entire weekend revolved around a bottle of Patron, a sandy bathing suit, and a throwback basketball jersey with "CHICK'S BITCH" scrawled across the front. You wanna play intense? BEAT THAT, IRENE.

We have a guest staying with us this weekend though, so in a slightly-above-lazy attempt at being a good host, I have prepared a list of potential natural disaster survival essentials:

1. Beer

2. Marshmallows

3.

That's all I came up with and I'm pretty sure we're out of marshmallows, so COME ON, IRENE!

Tweet