Ocular Fusion

Whenever I hear the name "Wilma" usually two things pop into my mind: my mom's friend in Virginia and Fred Flintstone's longsuffering wife.

That may soon change. This morning, Hurricane Wilma, the third Category 5 storm to form this season is now churning her way toward the Gulf. She is presently the second strongest storm to have ever formed in the Atlantic Basin and by this weekend will likely pose a "significant threat" to southern Florida.
One wonders if there is not some diabolical mind out there who has created a weather machine and is bent on destroying us. If this one makes landfall as expected, it will once again test our resolve and resources to the extreme.

Everyone together now: Dear God, please tell Wilma to get lost.

My wife and I were discussing this and other weighty matters during a rare dinner out sans kids. We considered the prospects of running away together to some "safe" place where nothing much (especially hurricanes) ever happens.

It suddenly occured to me that nothing much ever happens in Montana. Think about it . When was the last time that you ever heard about anything bad happening in Big Sky Country?

Surely that's what Captain Vasily Borodin must have had in mind. He was Sam Neill's character in The Hunt for Red October who was fascinated with the prospect of defecting to a country where he could travel with "no papers" and settle in a state where he could carve out the kind of life that any man dreams of:

"I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck...maybe even a "recreational vehicle."

Ah, the life. I already have a good American woman (who is anything but round for the record), so I all need to pick up is, well, a pickup, and we'll be good to go.

Captain Borodin, unfortunately, never made it there, but that doesn't mean we can't.