And now Hurricane Irene is bearing down on us...

In the past week or so I've had, in no particular order: food poisoning, a sick family member, me getting sick (again), earthquake, extended travel, technical problems which kept me away from this blog, and various metaphysical crises...

...so here comes Irene.

Getting a bad vibe about this one, folks. A lot like the one I had back in '96 when Fran came roaring ashore. Even as far inland as Elon it kicked the slats out of everyone bigtime.

Got to have a healthy respect for a hurricane. Admiration, even. A hurricane really is an amazing mechanism: a heat and thermal dispersal engine of ginormous magnitude. Without hurricanes, the oceans - and the Earth in general - would become much too warm. So in a sense, hurricanes are an asset.

But even so, to be in the path of one truly is like looking down the barrel of God's shotgun.

Longtime readers know how much of a hurricane nut I am, soooo I'll be blogging about it as best I can while also catching up on all this other stuff. In the meantime, especially to our friends at the coast: y'all stay safe!!