Wake Up Call

 

At 6AM the phone rang. As always, The Great Plotnik was wide awake the split second the phone rang him out of sleep. He checked the caller ID on the early morning call, and when he saw it was BZ, hit the illuminate button on his watch. 6AM. That means 9AM New York Time. Things are probably OK.

Except they're not. In the middle of the night The Big E's house in Northhampton, Mass, burned down. E is OK, and BZ is in New York, but E woke up to his neighbors screaming. When he opened his eyes the front porch of his house, right outside his room, was in flames.

He probably had that two-second OhmiGod, which goes with "What do I grab NOW?" But he had no more time than that. He made it out to the street with clothes that he threw on. Luckily, he had left his car key in his car. So a car and a sweater is what he's got right now. What he doesn't have is all the rest.

When Plot and Duck hung up the phone, they looked at each other, AGAIN. How many times do people have to have this conversation before doing something about it? Oh, they'd packed their Go Bag after Katrina, but it's been broken into so many times (Honey do we have any AA Batteries? Take some out of the Go Bag) that it's basically useless now.

Here are Plottie's thoughts this morning: Coincidentally, he bought a small but powerful external backup drive last week on Ebay -- brand new it's still only around a hundred bucks, and will back up his computer and Duck's computer, photos and all. He'd thought he'd keep it next to his desk, but no. It's going in the Go Bag, which will be packed where it can be grabbed in an instant on the way out the door.

When the Plots head down to Stiletto City, he'll ask PD and 5H if they want to backup their computers on the drive too. At 350gigs it can backup a whole bunch. Same for BZ. It only makes sense.

Now, The Big E doesn't have his wallet -- it wasn't right where he could grab it. So that's the next step: Wallet, keys, glasses, next to the bed each night. Shoes in the Go Bag for sure. With glasses you can see your wallet and with your wallet you can replace everything else.

Except...oh, the guitar. E lost his guitar too. Now that really hurts.