In the event of an emergency …

On Thursday, New Hampshire saw a blistering tempest that brought with it winds of up to 91 mph in some places and a mere 70 mph in others. Coupled with torrential rains earlier in the day, the storm left in its wake flooding, downed trees and some 300,000 homes without power.

Have ridden out the last two multiple-day outages at home in discomfort, this time we secured a hotel room early and, when the power had been out for a full day and night, packed our bags and headed for the safety and comfort of the Marriott.

It was tough to pack in the dark, but I managed to pack all the necessities for an evacuation: Tooth brush, change of clothes, bottled water, laptop, makeup, a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, issues 2-5 of Sweet Tooth, the first TPB of Transmetropolitan, Astro City: Confession, and The Drawing of the Three, book two of Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series.

It was, after all, only a temporary evacuation. If circumstances had been more dire and we’d had to leave our home for a more extended period – say, due to raging conflagration, alien invasion or a nuclear event, I certainly would have packed differently. I would have added my iPod and Ed Brubaker’s Criminal series. And probably Watchmen. It is after, all, best to be sensible under those kind of extenuating circumstances.

The first step is admitting you have a problem …

Today I discovered something important: I already have too many freakin’ comics.

I went to look for something on the pile I keep next to my bed, only to discover there were 1) several piles 2) several bags of comics from the comic book store (several of which I had already forgotten I had) 3) several trade paperbacks (or in the case of The Dark Tower, several hardcovers 4) several trade paperbacks that I hadn’t read in a separate pile and 5) one Janet Evanovich book.

The evidence

It was like one of those Chinese boxes where every box you open has a smaller box inside except every time I picked up a pile, the one underneath wasn’t smaller. In fact, some were bigger.

So, I gathered everything up and put it in the box you see here. For you long-time comic fans, this may pale in comparison to your collections, but I haven’t been at this long, so for this house at least, that box has a whole boatload of comics.

And that’s not all of them. What that box doesn’t have is 1) the smaller box of comics my husband Mike got for me at an auction 2) The Dark Tower books 3) the few I lent to my son 4) the books that haven’t arrived yet in the mail (sorry Double Midnight Comics, I SWEAR I buy most of them from you) and 5) the two Astro City books that Ian lent me that I haven’t read yet. (Sorry, Ian, I’ll get to them, I promise.)

By the time I had done that, I forgot what it was I was looking for in the first place.

I think I have a problem.