9:14 p.m. I'm writing this entry a few hours after sundown on what I hope won't be the last silent night we have for awhile. But it may.

Tomorrow night is the big blast, the big bamboo, da bomb. At the very least, here in the city where I live and work, there will be more than a few gang-related guns being fired into the midnight sky. Unless the owners of the guns are suddenly hoarding their bullets.

A thoroughly disquieting thought.

Tonight all is silent, and some of us are in readiness. I joined several newsgroups today, bookmarked a few web pages, and looked askance at my empty water jug collection. I really don't want to be one of Them. I'd rather be one of Us and take my chances.

A UFO-watch newsgroup member posted a whole list of pre-end-of-the-world tasks that the typical Diddley-doodley-do Family Next Door should undertake if they're going to survive this simple numbers rollover. The header is Helpful Hints and Last-Minute Chores for Y2K. I don't know about you, but I run fast and I run far from people who use the word chore.

It's going to be an exhausting day for Them: washing all the bed linens and any stray laundry, making sure all the family members have bathed and shampooed by Friday night (so important! and so often overlooked!), baking those breads and casseroles, filling up the tubs for the all-important toilet flushings, and of course getting out there and topping off those multiple gasoline tanks.

As they say to each other: "At this point, we really don't need any more information about massive prep and survival techniques. We've already done that for several years now, we're as ready as we can be. <smiles> "

Don't you just hate that? Don't you want to creep over to their property and throw their breaker box just for the fun of watching all their blackout shades come down and the white plastic-burning smoke start billowing out their chimney? If you make some appropriate starving-masses noises right outside their front door, plus the mumbled walla walla of the angry mob, you won't see hide nor hair of them until spring.

But that's all for tomorrow night. Let's quietly enjoy tonight, therefore. It's just possibly the last normal night of the century. It's Thursday. Friends and Frasier are repeats -- is that normal enough for you? There was a strange surge in our house electricity today, but that could have been anything. I'm merely in a state of heightened awareness, that's all. I'm not alarmed -- yet.

But notice: I do have that big satellite up on the roof and I intend to use it. I'm going to be looking and listening for -- well, I'm not exactly sure what to look for. I've got a neat website bookmarked called Time and Date where you can watch the whole thing start to move across the earth, successfully or not.

It starts, by the way, in just four and a half hours from now, at 2 a.m. Friday morning, Pacific Time in two places called Kirimati and Nukualofa. But if you decide to go to this website and watch the proceedings, I'd advise you to avoid the crowds and get there early because the stupid applets take a few minutes to load and if you're not careful, you might miss all the fun.

Assuming, of course, that we still have electricity and phone lines. I've also linked up with this organization:

The Center for Real-Time
Results of Y2K

So, if there's any problem in Nukualofa, if 10,000 Tongans aren't singing the Hallelujah chorus in just a few hours, I'm going to go online and tell -- and up to the roof -- and yell. We've all waited our whole lives for this.

You could hear it here first. Check back early and often. Believe me, if there's any problems over there, I'm going to start abluting over here. And of course, I'll share everything I have with you -- just not with Them.

They scare me.