Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

On Saturday morning, while The Gryphon and I were trying to decide what we were going to do now that it was raining and we couldn't hit yard sales like we had planned, I got a call from my Mom.

"Your dad's getting flooded," she said. The river was supposed to crest at 30 feet, which was five feet above flood level.

I'm ashamed of my first reaction, which was, "What about my truck?"

You see, my 1988 Ford Ranger has been sitting in my dad's parking lot since last fall, under the mistaken assumption it would be easier to sell it in a rural area.

Only recently had we found a buyer for it, and I was supposed to go up this weekend to take care of transferring the title.

So I called Dad and asked him if he was going to move the truck to higher ground before the flood hit, because of the impending sale.

"Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. The deal fell through." Apparently, the guy had found another car. But Dad said he didn't think it was going to be as bad as they said, so there was probably no need to worry.

He was busy moving things to higher ground in his building, and then he was going to take his cats and stay at Mom's until the crisis was over. At first he was going to leave his cats with enough extra food to last them several days, believing it would be more traumatic to move them. But I convinced him to take them, since if the water was bad enough, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) might not let him back to his apartment for much longer than he thought.

For 24 hours, I was miserable, wondering what was going on, trying to get the latest information from the National Weather Service. The newspapers from that area were useless because none of them seemed to update their web sites all weekend. The Gryphon and I found a news radio station from that area that offered streaming audio on their web site, but they were just airing a health program. Maybe Dad was right and it was no big deal.

But Mom had said they were setting up shelters and everything, and had established a curfew.

Meanwhile, The Gryphon and I went ahead with our plans. We watched Ghost in the Shell on DVD, and then I worked on the title graphic for an e-book I'm putting out. Then we caught a matinee of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence at the AMC Plymouth Meeting.

We had a little time before the movie started, so we got something to eat at the food court in the mall and then waited in line for an age at the Verizon booth for The Gryphon to make a payment.

The animation of the second movie was absolutely incredible, and it matched the emotional intensity of the first. Ghost in the Shell 2 was a cyberpunk detective story where a cyborg cop and his human partner try to unravel the mystery of why sex droids are murdering their owners.

The movie had a lot of dreamlike imagery, which I understand is a favorite of this director. It was great to see the movie on the big screen, especially so you could marvel at the seamless blend of CGI with traditional animation.

After the movie, we each got a scoop of Ben & Jerry's at the mall. Back home, I did an assignment and then tried to find the latest information on the flood. The weather advisories were still predicting 30 feet, but the actual levels being reported hadn't reached that.

My parents told me the worst flooding they'd ever had there was Hurricane Agnes in 1972, which reached 33 feet.

The next morning, Mom called to say the flood waters were receding and that Dad's building had only received a relatively small amount. He got a little bit in his waiting room but his office was otherwise fine. His living quarters on the second floor were bone dry, but of course, his tenant in the basement apartment got hit.

I called Dad up to find out how he was feeling about the whole thing. He seemed just as cheerful as he'd been before the floor had hit. So I had to take his word things weren't so bad. I began to relax.

The Gryphon and I hit some yard sales, the idea being to find more used books I could sell on Amazon.com under my shop, Penn Wood Books. The first stop was a multifamily yard sale, where several families on one block were having sales the same day. We got books at two different places there, some of which looked very promising.

We stopped for lunch at Nifty Fifties, which is a diner with a 1950s theme. I had a milkshake with my crab cake sandwich. The milkshake was practically a meal in itself!

Our next sale had been advertised as a "Divorce sale: everything much go!" This one was a bit odd because it was inside her house. She had a sign out front which I almost didn't see. The Gryphon wasn't so anxious to go inside, since it seemed odd.

"Come on, aren't you curious?" I asked. "Besides, you took martial arts." This was a reference to the fact that he was wearing my old Jung Sim Do sweatshirt, since he hadn't brought his jacket along.

We went inside and she was lounging on a couch, smoking a cigarette. She told us the sale was on all three floors of the house and we ought to walk around and see what was there. We asked if she had any books, and she had a box of mass market paperbacks, only one of which looked interesting since it seemed to be a special edition.

The place was emptying out, with most of the good furniture already claimed and mostly odds and ends left. I examined two feather boas and considered them for a Halloween costume, but couldn't immediately come up with any ideas so I left them behind.

Strangely enough, the last yard sale was also inside someone's house. She had an apartment crammed full with stuff, because she had recently closed her antique shop. I bought a stack of books from her, but we had to get going. We had another movie to see.

Downtown at the Ritz at the Bourse, we saw THX 1138, which was the director's cut re-release of the classic 1971 George Lucas movie. The movie holds up really well. The visual style is stark, which makes it timeless. While the computers in the movie are bulkier and more mechanical then today's computers, this simply added to the sense of impersonal alienation.

The movie is a classic dystopia about a society run by computers, who control drugged up humans. Life changes for the title character, played by Robert Duvall, whose female roommate begins switching his drugs. He comes awake enough to realize what sort of limited life he's living.

I hadn't seen the original, so I didn't know what was altered. But whatever was done was done seamlessly.

Back home, I did a couple more assignments while The Gryphon cooked us dinner, a delicious cauliflower and fish curry. After I finished my assignments, he was sweet enough to help me format my latest e-book, which I'll talk more about tomorrow.

Overnight, I got cold and actually turned on the heat. But by the time I got back from my morning dog walk, it was warm enough I could turn it off.

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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