What were you doing?

What were you doing at 10:15 a.m. on February 22?

Here's what I did. I'd dropped my truck off for an oil change slightly before 10:00, and walked to the Better Bean coffee shop in center of town, lugging my laptop in a briefcase slung over my shoulder. By 10:15, I had my vanilla latte and toasted raisin bagel spread with cream cheese, my laptop was booted up, and I was settling in to finish writing a story for the paper.

At the same time, I later learned, a neighbor of mine was in the middle of a conference call from her home. She couldn't hear over the barking of her dog, so she shut herself in a bedroom to muffle the noise. She looked out the window overlooking her porch, then said to those on the other end, "I'll have to call you back, My house is on fire. Can you take over, Matt?"

Two women who live within a half mile of each other: One spent a comfortable hour and a half in a coffee shop. The other spent that same hour and a half watching her house burn. This is life. We take turns sharing the good and the bad.

If you don't remember what you were doing at 10:15 a.m. on February 22, it was probably good. We remember the bad.

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~Upstream and Down~

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