P.S.

One of my afore-mentioned girlfriends has to take a big test this afternoon before we can hop the ferry, so I just want to put out some good vibes for her. She's an intensive care nurse at Harborview, our regional trauma center, and she's taking some kind of special certification exam. I just want to point out that if a disaster hits here, she will be one of those "essential personnel" who spends days at the hospital doing heroic work under impossible conditions, like the nurses in New Orleans who spent a week hand-venting patients surrounded by a soup of toxic goo. She doesn't think of herself as heroic - not having been actually put to this kind of test - but I sure do. Because she does the job, knowing that it's always a possibility.