-- Monday, March 20, 2000 --

3:36 a.m. Well, we have sort of a situation here. It's pretty interesting, actually. It's the middle of the night. There's a big, bright full moon. There is a high wind blowing, and I mean a really, really high wind.

The palm trees are bending and up until a few minutes ago, I was busy building my top-secret demo and fussing on how the time was drizzling away and noticing, of course, that the wind was blowing extremely hard, but up until now, there's been a cozy, homey feature to the high winds.

You see, we have this spinner on our roof. It's meant to let hot air out of the top of the atrium, and there's a mesh inside to keep the birds from flying in. Once the wind starts up, however, the spinner takes on the sounds of a hard-working factory turbine, just a whining and a thumping and who-all knows what. It's a sound I've sort of come to know and love.

Except tonight the winds were really really fierce and they sort of grabbed the spinner by the whatsis, and almost threw it off into the next person's roof and windows and perhaps garage or car. It was at the "almost" stage that we ran upstairs, after hearing that comforting thump turn into a howling shearing shriek of metal.

The darn thing was hanging by a thread.

And it was very, very heavy. Now, both Igor and I like to use our combined twenty delicate fingers for various typing and phone dialing jobs, and even though we were unqualified, we really tried every which way to unhinge and bring down that huge, giant, ten-ton spinner without slicing off several important and sentimentally loved digits. Plus -- did I mention that the wind was really blowing?

We couldn't just leave it hanging there, even if we wanted to, even if it wasn't a sharp guided missle, because it was aimed directly at the outside playground of the preschool nursery next door. The situation was precarious.

I have long hair and I may not be the sylph that I'd like to be at this time, but I was in danger of being blinded by wind-whipped hair and blown off the roof. There was only one thing to do: yippee! Call the firemen!

Who doesn't love the firemen? They came in seconds, they climbed up on the roof, they grabbed that thing (without gloves) and they yanked it down and there you go. All business, these guys. Risking life and limb so you don't have to.

My real-life heroes. Love me my firemen. They were shy and in a big rush to get to the next emergency, but they were kind enough to pose for a picture. Yes, my house is pink.

And oh happy night: something has happened that I can, indeed, write about. Believe me, the next time I run out of topics, I know who to call.