With tiny-violin music playing on the waahmbulence radio

Waah:

-NYC-centrism and the storm: On the one hand, commenter Sigivald has noted that I no longer live in NYC, and should thus stop getting my news from the NYTimes. On the other, that's where there is regional news. Or so it seemed until I began following the very useful Planet Princeton on Facebook. But I'm trying to figure out what's going on around NYU and where I live, not to mention the mess of trains and roads needed to get from Point A to Point B, so I do need to be following the NYC news as well. Of course, there's this thing where the city is kind of like, OK, that's done with, now let's move on with life, and I'm sitting at home (or escaped to a library) and reminiscing fondly about refrigeration, non-cold showers. It ain't over till it's over, everywhere, not just in places the subway goes. (Didn't love the Facebook post from someone I don't really know, about hehe the people who live with their parents in Jersey. Some of us just live in Jersey, and would arguably be a good bit better-off in the storm if we did still live at home with our parents. Don't judge!)

-And 3G makes it all the stranger - by virtue of having (some) Internet access, I feel somehow lumped in with the people who are thinking about those who were actually screwed over by this storm. While I'm certainly grateful for having not been hit by a falling tree (a form of gratitude one has all the time, if at lower levels, living where I do), I'm not quite prepared to put myself in the aren't-we-so-very-very-lucky camp. There are, like, busses to a local gym that's permitting the more cold-water-averse academics to shower. The device-recharging station was a zoo. Not having power loses its quaint charm (fireplace notwithstanding) after a while. "Hurricane comfort food"? Not under the conservation-of-matches and no-refrigeration regime. There are maybe five distinct reasons baking is impossible.

-Will NYU begin before NJ Transit does (likely), and which impossible combination of 4am busses will make getting to class on Monday possible?

Not-waah:

-How to get through it: A storm is not the moment for Literature, at least not in the nouveau-roman sense of the term. I just sped through the first volume of "Tales of the City," picked up at a used-book sale a couple weeks ago. I'm in 1970s San Francisco, not quasi-rural NJ in a blackout. I'm thinking every last look-this-novel-I-might-one-day-want-to-read-is-just-a-dollar purchase is going to come in handy.

-DVDs. Remember those? Never mind that it's a bunch of Seinfeld and Nanny, and episodes I've seen a million times, because I never really got into buying DVDs, and that's what there is. Regardless, it helps to have that option.

-I got to stay home and cuddle a poodle for a whole week rather than wake up in the dark and commute on NJ Transit. I don't have the alcohol tolerance necessary for the more sophisticated, hard-liquor approach to a blackout, but this one isn't so bad.