So, there was an earthquake this morning, which is an unusual occurrence around here.* There was a fairly big earthquake back in 1992, and I remember being freaked out about it (I was reading a Stephen King book at the time--I remember it being a hardcover "The Dark Half," but that came out in 1989, so it might have been "Needful Things"--and the room started swaying around me, leading me to say, "I promise I won't say no more bad swears! I promise I won't hawk no more dirty books! I promise I'll eat all my lima beans!"
Well, this one was at seven-something in the morning, and it woke me up. Honestly, my bed was rocking like Big Anklevich's on a Tuesday, and they said it was a 5.7 on the William Fichtner scale.
While a 5.7 isn't The Big One, it was still the most significant earthquake we've had since . . . wow, 1992. It still damaged a few old buildings, a few walls came down, and Big's old news station (and mine as well, I suppose) dedicated most of the day to reporting about it. There was flooding at the airport, a lot of neighborhoods (briefly) lost power, and it was followed by more than fifty palpable aftershocks (we're still feeling them days later). Well, if that don't get you back to church, nothing wi--
Oh yeah, church is canceled for the foreseeable future. Whoops. Sorry, ladies.
My sister, prompted by my mother, who is continually stirred into a panic from the media she consumes, woke me shortly after the earthquake, and asked if I would go to Costco with her, to load up on, you guessed it, toilet paper and such. I didn't really want to go, but I try to be a good brother, and responsible(ish) and make myself available to those around me. I drove her to Costco (which is a big warehouse/bulk store, where people buy pallets of items rather than just one or two), and saw something that I usually only see on Black Friday each year: a line of people going around the building and down the street, waiting to get into the store.
Honestly, I've never seen its like. Even on Force Friday in 2015, when Toys R Us had people lined up down to RC Willey two stores down, it wasn't like this (plus a couple of those guys were dressed as Stormtroopers, so it was a happy queue rather than a terrifying one--come on, you've seen those guys shoot a blaster). We're supposed to be practicing social distancing (the official handbook says, "Imagine Rish Outfield at a school dance"), but the line of people and carts was such that we got to know everybody in the line around us, asked what people were there for, and if they felt the earthquake or not. To their credit, none of the people--not a one--were assholes, but I've a feeling that the assholes wouldn't be standing in the line to begin with.
Costco is a store where you have to have a membership to get in, but I found out that some people who are not members get around that by buying Costco gift cards, and being let in to use that. I didn't know you could do that, but then, I've never had a Costco card, and except for the time I ran into my old would-be girlfriend Patricia in that particular store, I have no affection for the place.
We did stop by at the Walmart around the corner, and there was no rice, no bread, no pasta, no cleaning products, no soup, no canned fruit, and absolutely no women interested in dating me. Rather vexing, I must say. For the first time in a decade, I didn't check the toy aisles at all.
The entire morning was eaten up by that, and then my sister had to go to work, but I asked her if she'd like to stop by Burger King (which was fortuitously/mysteriously open) and grab something to eat before she left . . . and she told me she doesn't like Burger King. So I left her there in the parking lot and drove away, but I regretted it later when I had to unpack all the groceries by myself.
I ended up falling asleep while editing a podcast, and when I woke up, I was groggy and upset that a useful chunk of the afternoon was gone. So I drove over to the bank of stairs and ran up and down them a couple of--
Okay, it only took one time up those stairs before my body felt at the point of death. I gasped and choked and couldn't get enough air in my lungs, and did that thing where you try to spit and end up getting it down your chin instead. And just yesterday, I thought I was getting better.
After going up and down the stairs a time or three more, I went to the same park where I went on Monday, and sat in my car and wrote a little bit (I'm typing this in the car). I want to be a productive member of society, or be remembered that way, but really, all I have to offer is my writing, my Sean Connery impression, and my audio work/podcasting.**
This story will probably be called "Meet The New Clerk, Same As The Old Clerk," and tells of the rehiring of Meechelle, someone who worked at the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast years before, but quit after a disturbing experience. The story is bound to be even more boring than the others I've written, but I'm afraid I don't much care about that--I'm so enjoying writing this series, that it's already exceeded any other series of stories in my thirty years of writing (unless the Praisden Chronicles counts as a series, since there's probably twenty-five or more of those).
The central conceit of this story--the main point, I mean--is that Something Bad happened to Meechelle about three years before (besides, of course, me naming her a deliberately-misspelled Michelle), and that Something Bad won't get revealed until the end of the story. Unfortunately, I have yet to decide what that Something Bad was, so I merely drop hints here and there, and expect to be surprised when it is revealed to me.
Of course, all this writing may come to nothing if the pandemic continues to grow, but as Colonel Fury taught us, "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on."
I finished editing another Jason Sanford story for the Dunesteef, and if one of you wants to listen to it to help me find any errors, I'd appreciate it. I'm sure we'll talk about it when we do the episode, but there are so many amazing concepts and brilliant bits in this story, it reminds me that Sanford is actually a Writer, while I can only aspire to be a writer. Good, good stuff, well beyond me and my little haunted house soap opera vignettes.
And so, another day, another few words written. I hope you are well. And stay well.
Words Today: 673
Words This Month: 24,527
*I originally left it at that, but Big Anklevich made a big enough deal about it that I thought I ought to expand on it a little.
**I asked if my singing voice counts as something I have to offer, and was told, "No." There wasn't an explanation, just no.
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