900

That's the number of close asteroids a kilometer or more in diameter that might hit the earth. 900. Just one would be a "dinosaur" moment; the earth would be toast -- literally. Who knew that observatories with dedicated scientists are out there doing nothing but tracking these asteroids 24 hours a day?! TVO provides these gorgeous but scary tidbits of information all the time. Oh, and there are also 15,000 or so small asteroids within range that would destroy a city the size of New York in a milli-second. But there are 900 objects out there rolling around that could potentially destroy all life on earth in a nano second. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention all the comets and meteroites -- also orbiting with menacing regularity. Silly me! All I seem to worry about are eyelashes!

The impact of one hit would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like local fireworks. That's what the program I watched last evening said. Why do I watch? The good thing is that these realities make what I worry about all day long so insignificant.

The usual happened on St. Patrick's Day. A murder. Drunken to be sure. Every year the airwaves are filled with charming coverage of green festivities -- people in stupid hats, drinking green beer -- and every year the morning-after papers are filled with the wreckage of the night before. This year two life-long friends got into a fight and an 18-year-old stabbed a 22-year-old to death. When I think of my own two sons and the "hilarious" tales they tell of their antics, I could easily have been a mother waking up to that nightmare. As B says, "Nothing good ever happens after midnight."