It's been cold in my city.

Or it rains.

And for what seems like the last 100 years, if it's not either/or, it's both.

And now, of course, come the earthquakes:

Scientists: Even Bigger Quake Could Hit Midwest

Robin Lloyd
LiveScience Senior Editor
LiveScience.com

The magnitude 5.2 earthquake that rocked the Midwest on Friday was felt from Kansas to Georgia, and aftershocks could continue for months at this strange seismic zone at the nation's center and even trigger another big quake, a geophysicist said.

The quake occurred on a northern extension of the New Madrid fault, about 6 miles north of Mt. Carmel, Ill. The New Madrid fault was responsible for devastating quakes in the Mississippi Valley in 1811 and 1812. So the Friday quake and its aftershocks likely are raising the blood pressure of some residents and scientists.

For decades, scientists have debated whether and when the underlying fault could generate another temblor of similar and deadly strength.

"I think we saw a window to this possibility today in the Wabash Valley," said geophysicist Allessandro Forte of the Universite du Quebec à Montreal, who has studied the region's seismicity. "It's to the north of the New Madrid seismic zone, but given the strength of crust, the stress can be distributed great distances. It's not clear if we could see something in the next few years or even next few months, I would say."

"The $64,000 question is what this earthquake portends for the future," Forte said. "The answer is I'm afraid it can go either way."
...

Being bandied around using disturbingly masturbatory language...

Stress relief or hair trigger?

One scenario predicts that some stress is relieved on the local faults where this earthquake occurred and will cool things down for a few decades. The other scenario is not so happy.

...

Also there is a certain feline now on my shit list who felt compelled to awaken me before dawn to remind that Catz Gotta Eat, decided I wasn’t taking her seriously enough and climbed up on my laptop keyboard like she was a Wobblie taking to her crate in Bughouse Square.

And (like a Wobblie) dug in her claws when I tried to move her along, so when I picked her up she sent a tiny spray of itsy, bitsy plastic thingies everywhere.

I’ve fixed a lot of computer problems, but never had to recreate a Ctrl key from its constituent molecules. Nothing on the web quite explained it well enough, so quite the little thought-experiment ensued. Do I have all the bits? Did they use glue? Why are my fingers so frakking huge? Do I cut the red wire or the blue wire? Do I shoot the hostage? Take the last train to Clarksville? Risk breaking another key to figure out how this one should fit together?

Such a maddening, ridiculous problem that was so clearly being exacerbated by lack of sleep and coffee that I had to laugh; like trying to thread a needle, drunk, with a croquet mallet.

(Oh, and in my After Action Report I did give a hearty “hat’s off” to all makers of eensy-weensy extruded, stamped and mold-injected plastic things that can be clicked together with a jeweler’s loupe and a patient hour of yoga breathing (with a break at the 15 minute mark to search the area for one more part that mustmustmust exist and be of a certain shape if my theory of the component is correct. It did; a cat’s-toenail-sliver of white plastic hiding in a crease in a white cloth) into an ingenious scissor-like hinge that holds itself in place using nothing more than the Weak Force and nostalgia.)

And lastly, today is exciting Lap #388 of the Democratic Primary 500, which, around Lap #244, was already getting about as cramped and seething and uncomfortable as being stuck on a cross-country bus trip

seated between George and Martha.

All of which, taken in the aggregate, screams one thing:

Time to turn down the world for a minute

And turn up something loud and goofy.