Tuesday, January 19, 2010

"we don't have lightning in san francisco"

... says my roommate, jvz, a native of the Bay Area. yet last night we both jumped out of our sleeping bags when we woke up to a brilliant flash, immediately followed by a crashing sound, like a million exploding bowling balls, right behind our ears.

my mind instantly flashed back to a childhood field trip where we sat in a dark auditorium listening to a woman pacing back and forth in a giant clear ball talk about lightning. she'd put her hands on the inside of her ball while electric bolts of lightning zapped her from the outside to teach us that... i forget her point. i do remember something about counting the seconds between a lightning flash and its accompanying thunder crash in order to guess how far away the lightning is. i think if you can count 5 seconds, the lightning is a mile away.

last night, i didn't even get to the first second. with the screaming wind rattling our windows, it sounded like the world was coming to an end outside. like any good east coast-er, my first instinct was to grab some books + a flashlight + saltines and run down to the basement to wait out the storm.

except there are no basements in san francisco either.

damn.

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