Just Another Meatball in Paradise

[Cookiely]

Oct. 24, 2005

Just Another Meatball In Paradise
By STEVE OTTO



"The spaghetti models are all starting to come together," News Channel 8 soothsayer John Winter said as he stood in front of the weather chart we've all been staring at for weeks.

He was pointing out the various computer projections of where Hurricane Wilma was going to go and where it would strike.

It's interesting that computers, like the rest of us, don't seem to think alike. One computer was sure it was going to cross the Keys, while another had the storm blowing right into Tampa Bay.

It's been like that for weeks, while Floridians have changed plans and changed them again.

I suppose it's comforting to know that computers are people, too, but just a little unsettling now that they have taken over our world.

I kept thinking of that old song, "On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed."

Big Orange Meatball
Only this time, the meatball was that big orange and yellow blob called Wilma that has brought the final blow (we hope) to our summer of angst.

Like Big Brother, the orange blob has become an omnipresent eye, staring at Floridians for what seems an eternity, a foreshadowing of what might-could-potentially-probably-possibly-maybe come our way.

It seems as if we've been staring at orange blobs forever. The only difference is that they have different names.

All summer, the news has been dominated by some blob out in the Atlantic or Caribbean, heading off into a wide "Cone of Uncertainty."

Mad Dogs And Us
Friday night, we were sitting in the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Pub, where the TV screens above the bar usually show a ball game of some kind. Instead, there was that big orange blob with the pinhole eye staring back, suggesting that we should be doing something else, maybe buying batteries or looking for sandbags.

Think for a second about how much time these past two hurricane seasons we have spent preparing for or just staring at the weather folks and their 24/7 forecasts, wondering if we were going to be the next ones to draw the short straw.

Wilma, of course, comes along after the devastation of Katrina and Rita, which means we are already so stressed out we've had our cars tanked up and been ready to evacuate for weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, we did a story that showed terrifying graphics of how much of Tampa and the Interbay peninsula would be under water if a Katrina-like surge rolled our way.

Ball games have been moved around, autumn festivals postponed. When my schoolteacher Frau left school on Friday, she couldn't tell her students whether there would be class today. Decision-making is not a process that comes easily down at the school board.

Part of that blame also goes to Wilma, which stalled for days. I was supposed to be judging barbecue over the weekend at the Jack Daniels Championships in Lynchburg, Tenn., one of the great cultural events of the year. But how can you eat ribs while wondering if your hometown is sinking? OK, I could, but we also had our pets to worry about.

Well, it's Monday. If the computer spaghetti models are correct, this is the day of reckoning in some part of Florida.

The weather people also say that after the storm, cooler weather will sweep into the state, and Florida will again be that paradise that is the reason so many of us want to be here, meatballs or not.



This story can be found at: http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBMIQ056FE.html

[arkess7]

good story!!