Surviving Nemo

Photo: Movie's poster from Finding Nemo's Wikipedia page.

Some quick notes about life throughout the storm, a continuation of the previous blog entry here:

--One of the scarier moments of my life happened about four hours ago.  I let the dog out in the backyard (he kept me up by whining every four hours throughout the night, including about half an hour ago, when he had to go out again) and I put jacket, gloves, etc. on to shovel off the landing and steps so he could go out easier and so I could open the door with no problem.  I do this for a few seconds and he comes back to go in.  I let him in and close the door so I can do a thorough job.  Takes me maybe a minute, minute and a half.  I open the door to go in--and it won't open.  Looks like the thing you depress as part of the handle is frozen.  No problem, I think, I'll just chip away at the ice with the sharp, axe-like ice-breaker--though I'm wearing jeans, jacket, sneakers and gloves, with nothing at all in my pockets, including keys, and the wind's howling and it's freezing and it's 4 a.m.  (And I clasped the screen door shut on the front door, so I couldn't go around and enter that way even if I did have my keys on me.)  I chip away at it and I'm able to press it in--and it still doesn't open.  I begin to worry, as it occurs to me that I don't want to have to make an ass out of myself by going indoors at a neighbor's.  I think that maybe the metal bottom is frozen to the wooden platform, as I notice, finally, that the black strip has partially come off because it stuck to the ground as I opened the door.  (This happened to the strip at the bottom of my garage door two winters ago.)  So I hack away at the bottom of the door, even after I see that all the ice is gone.  Try again.  Nothing.  By this time I have frantically pulled at the door so hard that it should've come off its hinges, and I've noticed that the door doesn't even open a tiny bit.  Doesn't budge.  Finally I figure I may as well destroy the screen door, as I have a strong, thick wooden one behind it, and I so I wedge the ice-breaker between the door and its siding, where the tumbler would insert into the side, like I was trying to break into a locked door.  Nothing.  Then I insert the ice-breaker in between the door and the siding, thinking that I'll just pry the damn thing open, damaging it, but what the hell.  After a few minutes of this, it opens, and the door and siding don't seem to be injured.  The damn thing just froze against the siding, I guess.  I scrape away all the tiny bits of ice and snow all around the door and casing, and call it a night until my dog awoke me again four hours later.  I am now up for the day, and he'll sleep peacefully until about 2pm.  Total time thinking I was locked out to freeze: about half an hour.  I was cold.

--I lost power for about thirty seconds once, and for about a second to half-a-second maybe twenty times--thereby interrupting twenty phone conversations and making my Fios re-download itself twenty times--but I never did lose power.  Never thought I'd say this, but three cheers for the power company.

--The plow came by maybe seven or more times throughout the night and overnight, and only once did he plow the snow to my side of the street.  Hooray for me, but my neighbors have an impenetrable wall of snow in front of their driveways.  I'd help them out, but I don't have a snowblower.  I think another family member has it, and he lives in an apartment, and his gal pal lives in a condo.  Hmmmmm....

--Is this a named storm, or what?  Weather channel and weather.com say Yes, but NBC National News and my local NBC News say No.  Makes sense to name them.  If it's called the Blizzard of 2013, a la The Blizzard of '78, what happens if there's another one this year?  I'm just sayin'.

--I might actually be stupid enough to attempt to shovel out my driveway and steps myself--in shifts, of course.  I mean, what else could I do today for exercise?  I've got a friend of mine willing to plow me out and shovel off my sidewalks and steps for just $40, but that's after he's done all of his other rounds, as he lives down the street but has to travel as far as East Providence.  I don't know if I'm comfortable knowing I can't get my car out of the garage in case of an emergency before then.  Besides, I like the outdoors, even in a frozen winter.  My sinuses prefer it, big time, and the stain smell in here is still getting to me a little, though not as much as last night.  And, as I mentioned before, I think if I tried to open the garage doors now, the bottoms will come off again, being frozen to the ground.  We'll see.

--The snowing has mostly stopped, though it's still a little windy.  Looks like Snowmageddon out there.  But '78 was worse, as were the back-to-back-to-back Nor'easters we got in the mid-90s during April Fool's week.  About 70" of snow in maybe five days that week.  I know; I was out in it.

--If I saw someone walking outside right now, wearing short-sleeves and jeans or shorts, I'd think he was the Devil going for a stroll.  Speaking of which, if there was an evil thing lurking in our midst, this would be a good time for him to make an appearance, maybe more out in the rural areas, like Exeter.  Cuz my mind works that way.

--This is a good day to test the Post Office's "In rain, snow, sleet or hail" motto.

--My mailbox isn't covered like it had been in the 90s and in '78.  But I still have to shovel that out.

--I'm surprised I never lost power.  And grateful.  All my candles are in this really old commode (Don't laugh; it's made of wood, and has a giant mirror attached to the back, and where the slop bucket would go now is a very handy storage area, and it's in very good condition.  And it's actually my aunt's and uncle's, but they're awesome enough to let me keep it here until they say otherwise.), which is down here, but it has piles of the rest of my upstairs on it, and I have nowhere to put those things to get to it.  (In my previous post, I explained that I'm having all the upstairs floors sanded, stained and polyed.)

--I went through hundreds of batteries last night and found that maybe nine work.  But that was enough for two flashlights, plus another one I know is good that I can't find.  Total stash if I lose electricity: one flashlight from the 70s that, oddly, has a strong magnet on it, in case I want to attach it to my fridge, or something; a small flashlight that has a white light, a blue-ish light, should I ever have to track the Predator; and a red laser beam, if I ever need to assist a sniper.  And two and a half candles, including one tall one in a candle-holder with a handle that Dickens might've walked around with.  And a tiny one in a glass teardrop thing that looks very old. 

--And a ton of firewood for a ton if fires in my fireplace, had it come to that, though I wonder if I could have opened the metal grates at the top of the chimney with that much snow and ice on it.

--And a back-up generator that I stupidly put in the garage, where I would have to fight my way to since a lot of my upstairs is in the garage, and the automatic garage door opener wouldn't have worked if I'd lost power.  If I was lucky enough to somehow be able to manually open the door, I wouldn't be able to wheel the thing through 20" of snow to the backdoor, where it'd be closest to the fridge, and where I could use a squid and connect it to this laptop and to a couple of lights, and maybe to my electric stove.  Nope.  I would've had to leave it in the garage, with the door open all night for all the mice and other rodents and animals in the state to come in (so there'd be no carbon monoxide problem), and find maybe fifty feet of extension cords to hook it up to anything.  Jerk that I am.  So, power company, thank you again.  (Never thought I'd say that twice.)

--I need a snowblower.  But I'm over it.  I like being old-fashioned, but...

--Took some really good pics last night, as I was shoveling after the one time the plow pushed the snow to my side.  Figured I should get rid of the wall of ice and snow so my friend could plow me out later.  Why make him go through that, and maybe ruin his plow?  But I'm curious as to how he's going to get through the solid wall of ice and snow on the other side of the street, because I think the old ladies who live there (who're in Florida right now, because with age comes wisdom) pay him to do so for big storms.  He might have to snowblow that first.  I'd do that for him, but...I'm over it.

--I think I will be like the hard-working folks of old, before all this new-fangled technology, and go out and shovel the driveway and walks--in shifts, of course.  Snowblower?  Who needs a snowblower?

--Or a wheelbarrow?  

The Terror

Photo: Cover of the novel's first edition, from its Wikipedia page

I've beat the Dan Simmons drum before, with the recently-read Drood.  That book had been very good; for a look at my review on this blog, go here.  But now, let's talk about The Terror.

This book is much longer, and much more brilliant.  At 955 very thin, paperback pages, the most brilliant thing about The Terror is that, with the resolution not in doubt--the back, and associated blurbs, tell you that the whole of Sir John Franklin's expedition died while looking for the non-existent Northwest Passage.  If you don't read the backs of books, you probably Google interesting things, and no one will read 955 pages in one sitting.  So you Google it, or go to Wikipedia, and you find out that all of the men aboard died of scurvy, starvation, frostbite, gangrene, and poisoning from the ill-prepared cans of food, and that most of the bodies were never found.  You know that Franklin's spirited wife, Lady Jane Franklin, who had more money than he did, sent expeditions herself looking for his, all of which mostly failed.  You know that there were some graves found later, and some information in cairns, and the Erebus burned and sank at a given spot, and the Terror burned and sank at a spot about 90 miles from where it should've been, and that one man was found frozen on a small boat in the ice--and that's all you know.  But the fact that all the men perish is known from the outset.

So, the brilliance of The Terror is that all 955 pages are still compulsively read.  It's a rare thing that you're reading a page-turner even though you know how it all ends.  But such is the case.  Part of its greatness is that it works a metaphor that combines the fact that life itself is a non-winning struggle ("No one here gets out alive," Jim Morrison once intoned), and that the lives of the men is a non-winning struggle, and that the reading of the book itself is in many ways that same struggle.  We all know how all three of them end, and it's not for the best, and yet you read on like you fight on, because reading can be addictive like life itself, and what else are you gonna do?

Like all good historical fiction, it makes you want to read about the real thing.  When I do, I'll bet that I'll find that Dan Simmons exhaustively researched the real thing--his acknowledgements and souce listings are extensive, though in paragraph format and not in bibliography--and then creatively connected the dots as he went through the real thing.  A fictional connect-the-dots of the documented evidence, and of the most learned research and the most educated guesses.

The title itself refers to many things: the main ship itself, of course; the struggle of this existence (referenced many times); death, or Death, and the afterlife, if any; and, most menacingly, a real/mythical super-powerful creature that's basically Predator-on-ice--a gigantic creature with impossible strength that blends in with its surroundings so well you don't see it until it's upon you (or until you see its black, little beady eyes, like a camouflaged octopus).  Simmons is smart enough to know that you can't have a novel surviving on just this creature alone, especially when you're reconstructing actual events (and there's no mention of this creature, of course, in the actual events).

The writing is therefore smart as well.  It jumps between a dozen or so POVs, sometimes the same one in consecutive chapters.  It creates mysterious characters and things--Lady Silence (who the readers, especially the males, will find mysteriously awesome); Crozier's dreams; foreshadowings and almost-prophecies; and the creature, and a mythical/mystical/existential story and belief system that surrounds it--and allows one to live with it.  (I'm not sure I buy this last part--the last 20 pages or so of the novel--but it is effective and interesting.)  Simmons creates tension with simple bad guys, the elements, the creature, starvation, the accidental poisoning of the cans (and the Royal Navy's cheapness that allows for the instant rotting of much of the canned food), the social atmosphere of the time, the life of seamen in Her Majesty's Service, the whiteout conditions and screwy weather of the area.  And, of course, the ice.  Oh, my, the ice.  The wind.  The cold.  You'll believe you're there, in the ice, wind and cold--and if you live in Canada or New England this winter (or, from what I understand, in Oklahoma and much of the Plains for a week or so this winter), you almost were there.  But these men dealt with -100 degree (yes) weather almost every day.  Often it was -30.  Towards the end, it approached 0 and it felt like a heat wave.

Did you know that your own clothing could freeze to you if you sweat from exertion, and then it got very cold?  Or even if you sweat from exertion or fever while it was very cold?  Did you know that you can freeze to death and yet get sunburned at the same time?  Amazing.

Read this book.  It is impressive.  If you're a mystery writer, it is so good that you'll want to emulate it.