Friday, August 4, 2000

2:33 a.m. Every Friday night I expect big things to happen. The weekend looms with immense possibilities, and as the sun goes down on another dusty work week, I can hardly contain my excitement. It's a very old set of feelings, surviving unchanged in the back of my mind.

No matter that I've been married, with only a short break, for a total of 34 years -- I still think there's going to be a semi-important date on Friday night, followed by a really important date on Saturday night. It creates a strange sort of restlessness that usually involves ... going out. Doing something.

And so tonight, we did. A nice long sunset walk to a sushi restaurant and a nice long moonlit walk back home. I'd left some lights on in the window and the shabbat candle was still burning faithfully when we returned.

Now, on to Saturday, and more excitement.

It feels to me that there's an earthquake building, speaking of excitement. Things seem just a little too calm around here. Last night, when I was turning off the lights in the kitchen, for instance, I paused by the Sparkletts water jug -- 5 sloshing gallons upended into a ceramic crock with a little spout on the front.

One good-sized shaker and that whole jug and crock and contents will hit the hard gray tiles on the floor with a mighty splash. And I also have many many open shelves in the kitchen, and don't think I don't know it. I routinely move the soy sauce and the olive oil to the back of the pantry shelf, a little further out of harm's way.

But, you're never fully ready. When I'm in an underground parking garage, I'm always wary. Always. If we pause on a street under an overpass, I breathe easier once we've cleared it. People who've never been in an earthquake can't imagine such thoughts.

I know that when I lived back East, I never really thought about things like china cabinets flinging their contents or glass-framed paintings over beds turning into deathly slivers in the night. Now, I think about it a lot. Less and less in the years since 1994, but it's always there, close to the surface. Trucks rumble by and shake the ground and I look for a doorframe. I now know that if you're in a mall when the ground starts moving, you should get between the rows of clothing if you can, for padding.

For any other type of natural disaster, you have a tiny bit of warning. You can flee to the basement for tornados and storms, and even a fast-moving forest fire gives you a few minutes to evacuate. But an earthquake is the most amazing thing -- one second you're in Normalville, doing all the normal things, and then: Terror. Big Time.

It creates an amazing state of mind. A certain kind of weird readiness that never really lets you relax because there is no safe place, no safe time, no amount of planning that can possibly divert the thing. And they seem to come with a certain regularity, too.

I was thinking about all this as I checked in on the folks in the Big Brother house. How are they handling Friday nights -- the beginning of another weekend without any chance of going out? They looked pretty darn bored to me. No takeout, no videos to return by 11 p.m., no pizza deliveries.

I think we should start pulling some Mission Impossible stunts on them. Make them think the Russians have invaded ... or that the Democrats have nominated a woman for vice president ... or maybe the crew should get out the hoses and the sheets of tin foil and pretend it's raining ... or throw some strange blue lights in the windows ...

... you know? Shake things up a bit.