Like everyone else on the entire Eastern Seaboard, the Suri household is hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy.  We’ve got enough food to feed a small army (actually, this one is fairly normal for us), the bathtub is full of emergency water should the power go out, our flashlights are at the ready, and — of course — we’re bored as hell.

Times like these should be a good opportunity to catch up on work and to enjoy the luxury of just being at home with nowhere to go and nothing to do.  But instead they feel like a waiting game.  You sit down to work on a project but the ability to focus is devastated by a need to get up and look out the window.  Have the winds gotten stronger?  Is that rain coming down just a little harder?  Maybe you should check the NYTimes live updates.  Is there more flooding?  Where?  Wow — look at those pictures from Queens!

Oh, right.  Project.  I should get back to that while I still have power…

The same thing happened last year during Hurricane Irene.  We even had friends staying with us who had to evacuate out of Zone A and all we could do was sit around and stare at our laptops and mobile devices, searching for “new information” about the storm.  It was almost funny.

What is it that makes us act this way?  Is it the unknown?  In a world where we have so much information at our fingertips, we can’t fathom situations where we really don’t know what will happen.

I don’t know.

I do know, though, that I have a lot of work to do.  With school likely to be canceled tomorrow (and a lost day last week because I was sick), my syllabus is in disarray.  I’ve also got a mountain of midterm exams to grade —  oh, and two novels that are begging to be finished.  So, I will do my best to stop checking live updates on the storm every five minutes and get down to it.

But…if you want to Google chat, or Skype, or text…please do.  I’m bored!