Our former headquarters rather vulnerable

This macho aircraft you see on the deck of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum is McDonnell F3H Demon, a few blocks from the erstwhile Manhattan branch of Carbon Based, otherwise known as my apartment. We lived on the second floor.

With climate risk very much on my mind, I would tell my wife that a bad hurricane on a dangerous track could send a storm surge higher than our second floor window. We were in flood zone one (I'm not sure whether that's Zone A, the mandatory evacuation zone for Hurricane Irene). She would smile pleasantly at me and treat my dire warning with irony.

Now that we've let that apartment got and are living in the woods full time, she's absorbed in nonstop reports of Gotham inundation, storm surges, flying debris, and other cheery topics on the Weather Channel, which, as Jim Gaffigan insists, is clearly pro-hurricane.

Of course, the actual impact of Irene may turn out otherwise, a rain not even bad enough to disrupt the Falun Gong protests always underway, since our building was across the street from the Chinese consulate. The bad-tempered seagulls that roost on the hawser chains of the Intrepid may just crouch and ride out the wind. We'll see.