jimsjournal
| It's still winter -- 03/06/03 |
jimsjournal |
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Snow... started between eight and eight-thirty this morning... we're supposed to get between four and nine inches by the time it stops this evening. I had planned on going into the office today. My co-worker Julie gave me a ride yesterday. After listening to the morning weather forecast I phoned her and said not to bother coming by my house; I would work from home today. She was laughing when she anwered the phone -- CallerID, so she knew it was me -- because she'd asked me on the way home last night if I was planning on going into the office today because of a forecast of snow and I'd said sure, no problem, not afraid of a little snow. (In case you missed Monday's entry: my left foot is in a moonboot cast because of a fractured heel bone.) My daughter came home from school late this morning to say there had only been five other students in her eight a.m. class. She also has a two p.m. class on Thursdays but decided to skip it because of the weather... and the ride home was treacherous enough that she was very glad she decided not to stay. According to news reports there have been several mulit-car accidents on Interstate 95, most of them across the border in Massachusetts, one of those accidents may involve between fifty and one hundred vehicles.  She went out to shovel the driveway (schools are letting out early, so Nancy and Sean should be home soon)... after she had been out there a while I heard her talking with someone. I hadn't heard a car pull up but wondered if Nancy or Sean could be home already... but when I looked out I realized she was talking on her cell phone. (See picture.) I had started to write an entry on Tuesday, prompted by looking out at a bright and sunny late winter afternoon. In an entry back on December 21st I noted that sunrise had been at 7:09 and sunset at 4:19. Dark and gloom. Long winter ahead. It makes one appreciate the viewpoint of one's Druid ancestors, lighting bonfires to bring back the sun (given my ethnic background, I'm sure I had great-great-great...etc... ancestors in various tribes in that area of the world) Now, more than two months since the solstice and less than three weeks to the equinox, Tuesday's sunrise came at 6:17 and sunset at 5:39. I could look out the window and see that blue sky and bright sunshine. Sunshine. Despite still snow-covered lawns, the increasing length of the day seemed to telegraph the approach of spring. Now, just two days later, we've gained another six minutes of daylight -- or, rather, the span between sunrise and sunset is six minutes longer, because we sure haven't seen any sunshine today. I look out the window and I see a winter storm. [Why didn't I post an entry for Tuesday? Because every time I got past my opening about sunshine, it morphed into being about war with Iraq and ended up becoming a total rant. I am a reluctant supporter of going to war in Iraq -- I didn't vote for Bush -- and anyone who know me knows that I am sufficiently libertarian in outlook to be frothing at the mouth over the Homeland Security uber-bureaucracy that is being set up (not to mention the moronic airport security goon squads) -- however, having established that military force is required against Saddam, I am annoyed the we are wasting anymore time with the old ladies knitting society that the UN Security Council has become -- the UN has proven itself to be irrelevant (it did that when it made Libya chair of the human rights council) and the two-faced French and their cronies will continue to block and delay and obfuscate in order to build their status with the Arabs (and to appease their militant islamic mobs), so lets just get to it now.] Ah, but I will shut up now and get back to work. .......... Okay, late afternoon, snow has almost stopped, just flurries now... looks like nine or ten inches... Sean is now out there shoveling... time to hang this entry up on the website. |
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