4:19 p.m. Well, I for one am pleased as can be that everything turned out all right. I can now go to the market tomorrow and marvel at the cereal selection. I can take a nice hot bath tonight. I can type this entry and put it up there on my nice, sturdy server for one and all. What a multitude of small, wonderful miracles make up the grid of my life.

The grid is still working, and I am so grateful.

I'm not cold, but my leftover food is. I don't have to worry about a few oldish batteries and some really old votive candles for the only source of light if I want to read my brand new book on the goddess and the alphabet long into the night.

All major appliances are in fine working order. The reruns are back on TV. There is no public anarchy outside my fragile windows. I can return to my usual and most comfy worries about the small things, the really small things -- without ducking and covering. Or grinding. Or hand wringing. Or bartering.

Oh, I am so happy. I never realized how much I love my little life until I pictured it shredded by a million rogue ones and zeros. But tonight we rest easier. The missiles are snug in their silver silos. Our computers have not rebelled, but instead have remained benign little servants, quietly and still faithfully doing what we demand. They did not eat our future in one whole gulp.

A brand new calendar hangs in my space. It's a magnetic poetry thing and the I've put most of the words in a neat little bowl at the base of it. The poem I made for today by picking out six bits with my eyes closed and then rearranging them with my eyes open is:

I know. Needs more work. Don't we all? But we made it across the great unknown. And isn't it great -- just really really great! -- that we've all got world enough and time?