Cataracts and Hurricanoes.

About four thousand moleskin points, as my brother Jason would have it, to anyone that can identify the titular reference without a Google search.

Ophelia, which is, oddly, another reference to the same guy, is coming my way. She's presently a category one hurricane, which means a few roofing tiles get blown off and some power lines get knocked down and the people living in the beach communities have to go to a hotel for a couple of days. What exactly were they thinking by living that close to the ocean, anyway? I've filled up a bunch of bottles with tap water and have some canned food, so I'm not terribly concerned about a possible power outage, which is ultimately about the worst thing I'm likely to encounter. My apartment grounds are probably at least twenty or thirty feet above sea level, and I live on the third floor, so it would essentially require a tsunami to drown me.

Since this is not New Orleans, and Ophelia is not Katrina, and I am not in any great danger of anything more severe than a day off from school, I have to admit a guilty little pleasure: I'm a bit excited to see this. I want to sit somewhere where I can hear the howl of the wind and watch debris whip by at fastball velocity, I want to watch the rains fly sideways into everything until the whole world is drenched underneath the darkened sky. The winds have already begun to pick up and ravage the Atlantic, creating a surf so frothy and violent that it has driven all but the die-hard surfers into pacicked retreat. The gale is trumpeting the show to follow, telling me that Nature, while not enraged, is feeling a bit cranky today, and is coming to Wilmington to let me know all about her unhappiness. I've never seen this before, and I absolutely can't wait, the potential failure of my air-conditioning be damned.