No doubt you’ve already been following this, but the big one (or at least “a” big one) has hit Japan, though it appears that Tokyo has been spared. Still, the magnitude 8.9 earthquake with accompanying tsunamis that may hit as far away as the US west coast has caused a great deal of damage already. Hopefully all this shaking hasn’t awakened Godzilla. The video of fires and little Japanese cars being swept away are definitely Godzilla movie-like. And now there’s a fire at one of their nuke plants. No doubt it’ll be a while before we find out the extent of the carnage, but I predict that gas prices will increase. Not to be self-centered or anything, but gas prices could just be the start (not that they aren’t already too darn high; that Chevy Volt is looking better and better), because, if I remember correctly, as a hedge for the inevitable major earthquake, Japan has invested a ton of money in the US and around the world, with the idea of cashing those investments back in order to rebuild and recover (the kind of forward thinking that we’d never do here in the US, where we’d “invest” in tax cuts for the rich, no strings attached). So, look for the Japanese to sell whatever they own to the Chinese.

No tsunamis here, but there’s a lot of rain, snow melt, and the inevitable flooding. I hear the sump pumps a’running, so that’s good.

Speaking of Godzilla, something or other came crashing down rather noisily in the middle of the night, which scared the dogs. I figured it was probably cat related, but when I got up to have a look, I couldn’t see anything that looked like it’d collapsed or gotten knocked over. This has me worried, because I’d much rather see a shelf that fell down or something than not know if a part of the house that I can’t quite locate from the inside (say, a piece of the roof or a chimney or something) fell down. I’m really too physically, emotionally, and financially bankrupt to deal with it at this point in time.

On the bright side, SU beat St. John’s yesterday, and moves on to play UCONN tonight at 7:00 to earn the right to play the winner of tonight’s Louisville-Notre Dame game for the Big East Championship on Saturday. It doesn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things (the “big” tournament is yet to come), but winning is always better than losing.

Oh well, time to make a fresh pot of coffee and wait for daylight to take a walk around the house and make sure nothing fell off.

What, too obvious?

OK. How ’bout…

No?