So, you say you’re stuck at home because your driveway is covered with snow and the roads are bad and you can’t get out? Ah, don’t despair. There is so much you can do in a day, with just the ordinary things you have around your house. These science projects, for instance. My personal favorite: Fried Marbles. Followed closely by The Human Lightbulb. Such fun. And if I lived closer or if I still had my fourwheel drive truck? Well, I’d be there with you.
FORECAST:
Light snow this morning will taper off to a chance of light snow and freezing drizzle this afternoon. Another round of snow will overspread the area tonight, continuing into Wednesday morning. Snow will taper off from west to east Wednesday afternoon.
1 to 3 inches of snow are expected today. Another 3 to 7 inches of snow will be possible tonight into Wednesday.
Total snow accumulation for the entire event is expected to be 4 to 10 inches.
“Freezing drizzle.” Ah, dear reader, don’t you love weather language. Can’t you just picture it? It’s like, like the sky is an old man with a bad cold and a runny nose and a big beard and no kleenex in sight. Freezing drizzle. Lovely, lovely piece of language.
And this: “total snow accumulation for the entire event is expected to be 4 to 10 inches.” First of all, what is an “event” in weather world?
Oh, look honey, it’s a weather event!
Um, dear? That’s freezing drizzle.
No, no, I tell you: it’s a weather event!
Oh, for pete’s sake. “Event”? No, this is not a word that should be applied to weather. “Event” reduces rain and snow and wind and cold and this drizzle stuff to a flat blandness. Like something that would happen at the county fairgrounds. With booths. And people in leisure suits handing out badly printed brochures hawking their wares and services. That’s an “event.”
Give me the old days! WBZ News Boston and Weatherman Don Kent standing in front of a map! “It’s going to snow,” he would say. Maybe he would estimate how much, or tell you how long it would snow. Then he’d tell you how cold it was right then, and how cold it would get and what things would look like tomorrow. Simple as that. No “event” about it.
Outside my window now, it is spitting snow, a little. It’s cold, somewhat. There’s a frozen glaze of white on the ground. I’ll be surprised if we get four to ten inches. Maybe we will. I don’t believe weather forecasters anymore. I have this grim image of pale men sitting in windowless rooms in front of computer monitors, watching the weather models spin out tales of events to come.
If Don Kent were still around he’d be standing outside the WBZ studios, looking up at the sky. Snow’s coming, he would mutter. And so it would.
Today, the day before a big event I’ve been planning for weeks, news filters into my very distracted consciousness that we may be getting snow tomorrow. I first hear this early afternoon as I pass a friend on my way to a meeting.
“Did you hear,” she said, with some measure of delight. “Snow!”
“Huh?”
“Snow! Four to six inches! Tonight and tomorrow! Isn’t that great!”
Oh, f&%$, I thought to myself. No, it’s decidedly not great.
I went on to my meeting, beginning to rail and despair about the impending snow. Which might or might not appear, and might or might not delay the out of town speakers coming in tomorrow, those very important people around which my little event revolves. As I climbed the stairs to my meeting (where we would, in fact, end up talking about the snow), it dawned on me: Um, Jean, you realize that you can’t do a darn thing about the weather, right? Right. I suddenly felt much better. Snow, no snow — not a damn thing I can do about that.
So when the head of the meeting asked, “Jean what are we going to do about the weather?” (He said that. I swear he did.) I answered, “Well, first I thought that after this meeting I would do a Do Not Snow dance on the quad….” The nice well-suited men seated around the table got those rigid smiley expressions people get when they don’t know if you are demented, or kidding, or possibly — terrifyingly — both.
I let a couple of seconds go by. Then:
“I’m kidding,” I said.
You could see them relax. So then we talked about Plan B. It took us awhile, but the simple solution is this: If it snows, we’ll eat the lunch we can’t cancel and enjoy ourselves.
No. I’m not wishing for snow. But if it comes our way, which it might or it might not, I am ready for lunch.
I got curious, and looked up Chives and Scallions (aka green onions). They are related, both in the Allium family, but different species. Here they are:
Allium fistulosum – Scallion
Allium schoenoprasum - Chives (smallest of the onion family)
Let’s plant both!
I have no complaints, none at all, about this weather.
Temperature: -6°F
Wind: West at 12 MPH
Humidity: 75%
Dewpoint: -12°F
Barometer: 30.53 inches and rising
Wind Chill: -25°F
I will be the first to say it: my blog has of late deteriorated into the silly, the trivial, the slight, the incidental, and the maudlin(you know: cute dogs, surly cats, one still acutely missed horse, and other things like that).
Herewith, a promise: soon (I don’t know when, just soon) I’ll figure out what this blog is for, what my role as Hoosier Bloggette truly is, and begin writing things with a bit more focus. When will this happen? Who knows. Okay, you will know, dear beleagured blog reader. One day, in the not too distant future, you will dutifully check this space, read an entry, and suddenly say to yourself: Hey. What the heck? That had um, you know, substance.
Yeah. Substance. That’s it.
Just stay tuned.
It’ll happen.
I promise.
