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The Lorenzo de Zavala State Library and Archives building is currently undergoing a massive renovation. They’ve started in the basement, ripping out walls, abating asbestos, and generally doing things us employees are not privy to. There are signs everywhere warning us to stay out of the basement. There is no statement of penalty should we happen to break this rule and trespass, but frankly I don’t care to find out what the penalty is so I’ve avoided the basement like the plague since about January of this year.

They’re at a phase of construction that involves a tremendous amount of demolition. Every time I walk past the loading dock on my way to my car, there is a fresh mountain of rubble piled up outside the dock gate and a small bucket loader is there scooping it all up and depositing it into the large receptacle that sits across three of the lot’s four parking spaces.

Today, I can hear the demolition in my office, which is on the third floor. Just outside my office, in the acquisitions/purchasing department, the light fixtures are vibrating. There is an old wooden door with a large window in the middle of it leading into the hallway (this door reminds me of one you might see leading into a detective’s office in an old movie, and sometimes I want to paint names on the glass: Mike Hammer, Private Eye, for instance). Today, when the door is closed, it rattles obnoxiously in its jamb. I’ve come and gone quite a few times so far today, and each time I’ve forgotten and closed the door (because, you know, I wasn’t raised in a fucking barn, so I’m used to closing doors behind me). And each time, I take a few steps either into the hallway on my way out or into acquisitions on my way toward my office. I get a few steps and I hear the rattling. And so I stop and turn around and open the door just a little bit, just to keep it from making that awful noise.

Sitting at my desk right now, I can feel a vibration in my chair and on my desk. When I went home for lunch this afternoon, The China Syndrome was on AMC. Eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I watched the part when the reactor shows its first signs of meltdown. Jack Lemmon’s character sets his coffee cup down on a desk, looks over a printout, and then reaches for the cup again. He stops just short of grabbing it and watches it: The vibrations from the impending catastrophe shake the mug and cause a series of concentric circles to form on the surface of the coffee. Cut to his reaction; he is alarmed.

I’m sure we’re not headed toward meltdown here. I’m sure the engineers know what they’re doing. I’m sure this building is going to withstand all the surgery being performed three flights below me. But in the off chance that a worker accidentally rips out a load-bearing wall and all four floors of metal and concrete come crashing to the ground and I am buried in it (and hopefully die, because who really wants to survive something like that?), please give all my valuables to my kids and anything else to a charity of your choice. I mean, I’m sure it won’t come to that, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.