L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

OMGWTFSNOW?!?

I actually miss the days when the meteorologists in this area were always wrong. Used to be, they’d start hyping a snowstorm, only to have the predicted snowy deluge never materialize. I can remember several ocassions in which school systems shut down the night prior only to wake up to the rude reality that they closed for no reason whatsoever. No snow at all.

The meteorologists are starting to get better…and that sucks. They started predicting this storm at the beginning of this week. And they kept bumping the numbers each time they talked about it. 12 inches. 24 inches. 30 inches.

The storm started yesterday at around 11 a.m. I went into the office that morning, but when the president of the company came around and looked at me like I was crazy, I knew that it was okay to leave when the first flakes started to fall.

The snow finally stopped around 4 this evening. It was so blustery at points overnight that we awoke to a blanket of white over all the window screens and a pile of snow on the sidewalk that stood almost as high as the banister. I haven’t actually measured, but I can tell you that the snow drift I fell into when I was trying to check the phone lines at the back of the house came up above my knees. I’m going to venture a guess and say that we’ve got almost three feet. Some of the areas to the west got even more than that.

Like I said at the beginning, OMGWTFSNOW!

The last time we had a snow like this, I was about 12 years old. Actually, though, even that snow wasn’t this bad. This is now recorded in the history books as the fourth worst snowstorm in D.C. history.

I will grant you this…it is beautiful. I’ve taken quite a few photos since the storm began. I’d upload them, but they need to be resized and my main CPU is now off. The power started fluctuating sporadically around 3, so all essential electronics were clicked off at that point. The DSL also went out around noon. Followed by the phone lines at around 1. Both just came back about 20 minutes ago.

And of course my first thought was to come here to the lair and let its denizens know the 411 on my own personal white hell.

Can I just say now how much I’m dreading tomorrow morning? Sammy’s in about 4 feet of snow right now, thanks to drifting. And this is a heavy snow, denizens. Heavy, wet, clumpy snow. We’re going to be digging for most of the day, I believe.

The bonus? I strongly suspect that the federal government will be closed on Monday. Possibly even Tuesday.

Damn it feels good to be a contractor.

Anyway, so that’s where things are at Chez Loba. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a glass of wine waiting to be drunk and a cheesy 80s movie waiting to be watched. So I’m off…but only slightly…

My parents informed me last night that my magical, mystical doodle cat, the enigmatic Mr. Data, passed from this existence last Thursday. My dad said that he woke up that morning and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Data was on the counter where he had fallen asleep the previous evening. He looked up at my dad, meowed once, and was no more.

Always the gentleman, he waited until he could properly say goodbye and thank you before departing.

Part of me wasn’t surprised when my parents told me. Part of me somehow expected to hear this news when I called. I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow I already knew. Part of me regrets that I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Part of me doesn’t ever want to have to say goodbye to another pet ever again. It’s way too hard and, quite frankly, my soul is a bit weary of saying goodbye to those I love.

Still, he had a magnificent run at this life. He would have been 18 years old this June, which means that he was part of my life for more than half of my existence. I’d post photos of him in his kittenhood, he with his perfectly triangular head and skinny kitty body, but those will need to be scanned. Yes, he predated digital cameras. Came before my first cell phone, too. He even slightly predated my very first computer, which came into the house a few months after his arrival.

Obviously, he didn’t’ predate my Trek obsession. Poor little guy, stuck with a nerd name all his life. It was his own fault, though. His eyes were the most beautiful…most Data shade of gold imaginable when he was a kitten. There really was no other name for him. The gold metamorphosed and faded as he aged, but they remained beautiful. Just like him.

He was a rescue kitty, found crawling out of a gutter by my aunt. Filthy and flea-infested, he was hardly recognizable as feline. So she took him home, bathed him and gave him food. He thanked her by voraciously consuming said food and then pooping in her plant box. That was pretty much when I fell in love with him. How could I not?

Eighteen years is a long time to remember, too many years and far too many joyful memories to fully encapsulate in the space of this post. But to say simply that he was a wonderful, beautiful specimen of felinicity seems somehow insignificant.

He was Data. Hinja-Doodle. Prettiest Kitty in the World.

He outlived both of my dogs. More significantly, he survived Jodie’s puppydom. He also survived a poor decision on his part to consume part of a fake Christmas tree. Plastic pine needles are not good for digestion. He traded in one of his nine lives to learn this truth.

In his twilight years, he became a country king, moving with my parents to the Tarheel State. He was technically my kitty, but, as I wrote previously in my Angry Blogger^TM days, he and my father shared a special bond, perhaps borne from their solitary maleness in an estrogen-heavy house. Who was I to tear that bond asunder?

I don’t really know what else to say. My doodle cat is gone.

Au revoir, Mr. Data. Je t’aime.

Loba plans and the Prophets laugh. I had places to go, people to do today. Instead, I’m sitting inside, watching as the “one inch” of snow that the meteorologists said we were going to get has transformed into multiple inches. I know a lot of girls who would get excited over more inches than originally promised. I’m not that girl.

I’m also apparently incredibly dirty-minded. I do apologize. However, I never said that Loba’s online lair was kid-tested and mother-approved.

So I remembered another dream. Not that big a deal to most people, I’m sure. However, Loba very rarely retains memories of dreams. For a long time I thought that I didn’t dream at all. Then Dr. Crusher and Data explained to me that if Humans didn’t dream, we’d go crazy. That was when I knew that I had to dream…I just never remembered any of what I was dreaming.

I realize now that I only remember the dreams that I wake up during. Like this morning. I was having a dream about something that actually happened. It was my final semester of college. My classes were over for the day and I was walking to my car when I ran into someone from my high school graduating class.

This probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal to most people. You go to a state university located fewer than 30 miles away from your high school, you’re bound to encounter a classmate or two on campus, right? Maybe if you went to a normal high school. I did not. The number of students in my graduating class didn’t even reach into the double digits. So this was a pretty big deal.

In both my dream and in the real experience, I remember the awkwardness of the encounter…the surprise on both sides, the slight joy mixed with discomfort. I can’t speak for my classmate, but I understand now that my discomfort was based on the fact that encountering him forced me to come face to face with a part of my life that was slowly fading, as was the person I was during those days. College is a time of reinvention and discovery, and while there were no external signs of any major transformation on my part (no pink hair, no tattoos, no piercings…I’m insanely vanilla in my appearance), inside I knew I was different from the person he once knew.

I think he could understand this truth as well. While he still looked the same as he did in high school, he had changed his name (and in fact seemed quite flustered when I called him by his old name). He was in a state of reinvention as well. So there we stood, two people identifiable to each other only on the outside, still in a state of flux on the inside. Not really all that into being reminded of those people we were trying to leave behind.

There wasn’t really anything more special than this about the dream, just like there wasn’t anything more special about the actual encounter. In reality, I think we shared about 10 minutes of conversation in which we caught up with what each of us was doing, and that was that. No offer from either side to exchange numbers or e-mail addresses. Just a smile and a goodbye. That was more than 10 years ago now. It was the last time I ever saw anyone from my graduating class.

I think this memory resurfaced in my dream world because recently I ran into someone else from my old school. It completely threw me off because: A) I didn’t recognize her at first (she was barely a teen the last time I saw her and now she’s a grown woman); and B) she so quickly recognized me. Again, insanely vanilla in appearance am I that I can still be identified by someone who last saw me when I was 17 years old. But though she recognized me on the outside, I was acutely aware that the person she saw on the outside was no longer home on the inside to the person she remembered from those days. The foundation is admittedly the same, but the rooms have been cleared out, given a fresh coat of paint, and completely redesigned.

I’m not really sure where I wanted to go with this post. It was just something on my mind as I sat here in my geek cave, watching the snowflakes tumble and twirl from the sky.

Back at work for the first time of the new decade. W00t is in order, I suppose. It’s always so very difficult to get back into the work mindset after the holidays. It seems particularly difficult this year, what with the snow breaks and all. I knew, when we got 2 feet of snow before winter even started, that we were in for it but good this year. Snow flurries are expected tonight, and oh but it’s hella cold. Still in the upper 20s with an expected high of 32. These would be lovely temperatures if I was in England. Being in the States, however, I’m none too keen on them. I’d like to regain feeling in my toes at some point today.

It could be worse, I know. I heard on the news this morning that somewhere at the very tippy-toppy of Minnesota hit -33 degrees. I tried to process that information, but I think I pulled a muscle.

So, what’s the point of this post? I suppose to give a preview of things I’ve been thinking about doing here at the lair. I’m not calling them resolutions. I think those are silly. These are just things that I’d like to tackle this year. I like schedules and deadlines, and the beginning of the year seems like a nice place to start, no?

As I already mentioned, I’m not going to be doing the 50 Book Challenge again this year. I’m still going to be reading constantly, but at whatever pace I find most comfortable at the time. My main goal this year is to read only, or mostly, books that I own but have never read. I went through my shelves this weekend and collected about 40 books that fit this description. There are still others on the shelves like this, but the ones I chose are the oldest of the bunch. Some I don’t even remember buying.

Sigh.

Anyway, I went through last year’s list and discovered that of the 51 books I read, I own 30 of them. Of those 30, I’ve tagged 4 to be donated to the local thrift store: Resistance, One on One, The Road, and Before Dishonor. That might not sound like a lot to some, but for this book geek, that’s a huge milestone. If I can do the same thing this year, I’ll feel extremely accomplished.

I’m also going to do something similar with my DVD collection. I’ve got a disgusting number of DVDs. If I count all my special editions and television series, I think I’m well over 500 at the moment. I love movies almost as much as I love books. But I must admit that there are several DVDs in my collection right now that scream WTF. I haven’t watched them since I bought them…or I haven’t watched them at all. It’s time for a little culling of the DVD herd, so to speak. Time to target all those impulse buys from the used CD store or the various bargain bin buys I failed to resist. It will be a thorough review, not just of the movie itself but also of all the special features included on the DVD. It’s only fair to give the movie as fair a chance as possible to stay, right?

I plan on continuing Flashback Friday on a weekly basis. I know I missed last Friday and my Christmas post, while dealing with a favorite movie from my childhood, wasn’t tagged as a flashback…so I missed two in a row. I promise to fix that this week. I also plan on reviving my Poster Picks and Gaming Glory series. I don’t have a schedule for either, but I do have a few entries for each that I hope to tackle very soon.

The only other things you should expect here at the lair is a continuation of my geekery (life without Star Trek is not really life, IMHO), more PhotoShop phun, more silliness, more surliness, and more things that make absolutely no sense. I hope you’ll continue to visit. I do enjoy watching you all come and go through my tracking software.

Real world “things to come”? I suppose there are a few. More fun writing, of course. I’ve already started working on outlines for two short story ideas. Not sure if I’ll use either, but it’s nice to be thinking about them, to be thinking about writing again.

Also, I need to get back into my workout routine, which was completely derailed since Thanksgiving. I haven’t worked out for a solid week in a ridiculously long time, and I feel rather like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man because of this. It also didn’t help that the holidays bring with them all variety of culinary sins. So less sugar, more fruit. Even less rum and more water. EEK.

And more walking during the day. I’m already walking more anyway thanks to a parking garage shift, but I also think I’m going to start walking up the 11 flights of stairs to my office again. Not every day like I used to. Maybe every other day. Or at the very least, once a week. Definitely on any day that I’m not wearing my Janeway heels.

Yes, I own these shoes. I know, they look ridiculous and nothing like the comfortable Docs I prefer. But…well, I like how Amazonian I feel when I wear them. I easily graze the 6-foot mark when I wear these puppies. Yes, it’s silly. I’m already taller than most women in my office. But I like giving some of the guys a run for their money as well

[Trek Tangent: As ridiculous as these shoes are, at least they aren't as completely out-of-place in my working world as they were in Major Kira's and Captain Janeway's worlds. I never understood the logic behind putting Nana Visitor or Kate Mulgrew in the heels they wore with their uniforms. Even more ridiculous? Jeri Ryan's heels. I'm surprised she never broke something when bouncing through the corridors or planetside. No wonder she's in her fuzzy slippies here!]

YaY for TrekCore and their rare photos section!

Okay, I’ve prattled on enough for now. Time to get back to work. I’ve got miles to go before I sleep leave. Hope you all are off to a wonderful start to your 2010!

On behalf of Lwaxana, Jean-Luc, and all the crews from all the ships, starbases, space stations, outposts, inposts, brigs, cargo bays, and all other reaches of the galaxy, I wish you all a very happy new year. Here’s to the surprises that are still to come.

Yes, this is one of the several containers that my parents have in storage for me. Yes, every single bit of its contents could be tossed tomorrow with no serious repercussions…

…if having part of my soul recycled into dollar store toilet paper falls under the category, “no serious repercussions.”

Honestly, though, WTH am I ever going to do with calendars and TV Guides dating all the way back to 1995? Am I simply biding my time until I cross over into the age range in which it will not only become acceptable but expected for me to start decoupaging EVERYTHING in the house? I’ll just wile away my days, glugging sipping Captain Morgan and Dr. Pepper as I trim out Beverly Crushers and Dana Scullys for that extra special “Titian-Tressed Angels of Asclepius” medicine cabinet decoupage.

Okay, I need to stop, because that actually sounds fun…

To the denizens who have threatened to send out an APB on Sammy and me if I don’t post soon…haha. Of course we made it home in one piece. Sammy is a wonder car. Not even I can change that truth.

The drive home was happily uneventful. Little spits and spurts of rain here and there, but nothing terrible. We arrived back in our neck of the woods to find that most of the snow had melted. I think this is the fastest I’ve ever seen snow of this magnitude disappear so quickly before. Usually, it would take a minimum of a month before we could see the ground again. Ah, that global warming myth…

So Sunday was the day of rest. And errands. And Sims³. I spent a mortifying 2 hours just designing one Sim character. It was around about that point that I realized there was something really off in my universe.

Don’t get me wrong. I love The Sims. I’ve been a huge fan of that game since it debuted almost a decade ago. I can’t even begin to calculate how many hours days I’ve sacrificed to my Sims addiction. Of course, such calculations would then require that I figure how much of my life I have given and continue to willingly give over to video games, be they PC games, PS2 games, or now XBox 360 games (friggin’ Aerosmith Guitar Hero and Mortal Kombat).

As much as I love video games, and as much as they make me feel like I’m still a kid when I’m playing them, the simple truth is, I’m not a kid anymore. Time continues to eke forward, no matter how little mind I pay it. And so I ended up having a bit of an existential freak out as I was trying to settle down and fall asleep last night. Instead, I began running through the list of things that I always thought I would accomplish in this life before shuffling off to whatever universal waiting room there is beyond this.

Truth is, I never really made any plans for leaving a large dent on this plane of existence. I suppose you could say I’m unassuming (or as unassuming as any one with Multiple Internet Personality Disorder can be). I did once have a dream though. Just one.

I wanted to write.

Words, as many of you have no doubt figured out, have always been my passion. I love the beauty of language. How words can be combined to form shear joy or utter despair. Swords of the sharpest edge can’t compare to words wielded by a skilled writer.

Writing is what brought me out of the shadows when I was in school. I was always satisfied with standing out of the spotlight, doing the work that needed to be done, making the grades that my parents would find acceptable. Doing all that I could not to make any waves that would draw attention toward me. But then our 6th grade English teacher introduced us to creative writing. And that was all I needed. I devoured each assignment she gave us with a passion that I don’t remember ever feeling for anything else in my scholastic career.

Even when that section of our coursework was over, I continued writing. Silly little stories, always about my friends, always about imagined adventures taking place at our school. I found those stories a while ago. Oh, were they awful. But at the time, they were like Pulitzer winners to me. After a while, I began branching out, leaving behind the comfort of my familiar friends, and began creating new friends and new places. And the themes grew darker and sometimes more frightening. What else would you expect from a horror fan?

The point, though, was that I was constantly writing. Constantly finding new places to set up residence for however long it took me to weave my latest tale. I spent a month with snow-stranded friends being hunted at a lodge in Vermont. Then I traveled down to a tiny Southern beach community, to spend month with new friends as they unraveled the story behind their mysterious new classmate. Then I was drafted into Starfleet. I spent quite a bit of time stationed on a Galaxy-class vessel, weaving, unraveling, and re-weaving stories there.

That was more than 10 years ago. And what have I done since then? I earned a degree in English, which I used to secure a job writing policy briefs, speeches, and whatever other linguistic minutia my federal agency clients require of me. I’ve heard my words uttered by well-known government officials. Each time that happened, a little spark within me fizzled into darkness.

Loba Disclaimer: I do still love my current job. It’s far different from those early days. Far more computer geeky, and far less gov-speak. But what happened to my dreams of writing? Not even dreams of becoming a famous author…you know, the kind who gets their name printed on their book covers in fonts sometimes triple the size of the actual book title. No, I never dared to dream that large. I just wanted to write.

Now I realize that I spend far more time living in other people’s worlds than I do in my own. Whether it’s The Sims or some other video game, or whether it’s my attempts to read 50 books in a year (which, by the way, I haven’t yet given up on). Always someone else’s worlds. No longer mine.

So take this as an early resolution if you must (although, dammit, I detest resolutions): I will get back to writing. Not only will I get back to writing, but I will complete something by the end of 2010. Hopefully, it won’t take me quite that long, but if it does, it does. I’m not going to let this die within me. I used to love to write. Hell, I still love to write. Why else would I keep coming back to this lair (besides all you lovely denizens, of course)? So time to return to my other worlds. Time to get reacquainted with all my other friends. True, some of them have been occasional traveling companions for some time now. It’s time to give them a more secure home.

Who knows? If I come up with something that doesn’t make my beta readers vomit, maybe I’ll even attempt to be published. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it…

I set out tonight, hoping to watch something with the parental units that was as un-Christmasy as you can imagine. Then I realized that TBS was yet again running their “24 Hours of A Christmas Story.”

Oh, how do you resist Ralphie? You simply can’t, can you? I think that A Christmas Story is to my generation what It’s A Wonderful Life was to its generation. Only A Christmas Story is actually enjoyable. So we watched it twice. And now the SyFy Channel’s Ghost Hunters marathon is playing. And I’m about to refill my wine glass.

Could this be a more perfect start to Christmas?

I wish for you all a wonderful day, regardless of what holiday or beliefs you may hold. In fact, I wish for you wonder and merriment every day. And I hope that 2010 holds amazements unimaginable for each one of you.

And here, before I depart, is a special holiday wish from my favorite dancing doctor. I designed this for two very special ImagiFriends^TM. I hope they don’t mind if I share it with all my denizens…but how can I resist?

Want to hear how I temporarily closed down I-95 South and gave Sammy an early Christmas mud bath?

So today was a good day to travel, I thought. It’s the day before Christmas Eve, which I know is typically the popular travel day for people who travel for Christmas…which, thankfully, are far fewer people than those who travel on Turkey Day. I knew, however, that I should expect some rough riding at least until I was beyond the tenacious and ample mounds of snow that snaked up the I-95 corridor.

Truth. I sat for about 2 hours just trying to get onto I-95, then ended up in sluggish, sometimes stop-n-go traffic from the 495 merge until around about Kings Dominion. For those not in the know, that’s a hella long time. Thank goodness once again for my iPod and awesome podcasts.

Once I hit North Carolina, however, things were smooth as silk. The snow was gone, the temperature was wonderfully warm, and the sun was shining brightly and strongly down on Sammy’s sleek silver and salty frame. I cruised along at the lovely standard speed of 70 MPH (another reason to love NC!), listening to P!nk dissect her marriage and Suzie Plakson explain how she Didnwannadoit. Traffic had broken up and spread out, and I finally found myself all alone on my own personal stretch of the road.

This is probably the most serendipitous moment of my entire journey.

I noticed that a car was getting ready to merge onto the interstate, so I switched from the right lane to the left lane so that they would have a clean shot at the merge. Next thing I know, the driver is rocketing straight from the merge lane into my lane. While I’m right there.

Three things happened simultaneously at this point: I honked, slammed on my brakes, and swerved toward the left to avoid being side-swiped by the driver.

Know what’s kind of cool about I-95? Both north- and southbound lanes have these grooves on each shoulder that, when you run over them, they rattle your car just enough to shake you awake. Apparently, enough people were falling asleep at the wheel that TPTB decided this would be a good way to shock sleepy drivers back awake.

Sammy’s front left wheel hit these grooves as I braked and swerved, which startled me enough that I swerved back toward the right in what I have deduced in retrospect was a rather overcompensating manner, which started Sammy wagging his little tail like an over-zealous puppy. Cute on puppies. Not cute on cars.

The fish-tail motion started to increase and next thing I know I’m spinning. And angry. Not scared. Not panicky. ANGRY. Angry at the stupid driver whose ignorance has left me feeling like I’m trapped in the spin cycle of an industrial washer. Angry enough that I was saying things about said driver that I think would have made my Navy veteran grandparents blush.

Thankfully, my anger kept me focused enough that I did what I knew I needed to do: took my foot off the accelerator, turned into the spin rather than fight it, and started to carefully slow down until I could regain control. A couple of spins later and all was still. And Sammy was parked in the saturated sogginess of the ditch running along the side of the interstate. Facing the wrong way. But safe. As was I.

Of course, safe is a wonderful thing. But so is safe and not sinking into mud. Which I was quickly doing. Not even rocking Sammy back and forth was going to get me out of this. So after several increasingly frustrated attempts, I finally cut the engine and climbed out to assess the mess and call AAA. That’s when the awesome gentleman in the AT&T service truck traveling northbound pulled over and asked me if he could help.

I may not have always depended on the kindness of strangers, but this guy and the winch on the front of his truck were my heroes, fo’ shizzle. He told me to hang on while he went up and turned around so that he could come over onto the southbound side.

That’s about the point when I became the center of some very unexpected attention. While waiting for the service truck to return, I glanced back at the northbound side and realized that two state trooper cruisers with their lights flashing were pulling over across from Sammy. I also noticed that another car had pulled over further up the northbound side, and a Black woman was quickly running over toward me.

I only mention her race because this woman was about as pale as I’ve ever seen a Black person turn. Seriously, she was nearly as White as me…and that’s saying a lot. It wasn’t until she kept repeating “I’m so sorry…are you all right…I’m so sorry” that I realized this was the driver who nearly hit me in the first place. She had turned around at the first exit she found and came back, apparently calling the police as she did so.

I assured both her and the two state troopers that I was fine, just stuck in the mud and waiting for the nice AT&T guy to hook his winch up to Sammy’s bum and yank him free.

[Before any of you ask, of course I didn't refer to Sammy by his name or his gender. I didn't really need the added indignity of having the cops giving me a breathalyzer test...]

That’s when the county cruiser, the ambulance, and the two firetrucks arrived, blocking all lanes of traffic as they positioned themselves around my part of the interstate that was becoming increasingly crowded.

And that’s when I wanted to crawl under Sammy and hide.

This was also the point when I realized that, although I was semi-oblivious to the danger at the time inside my anger warp bubble, people around me witnessed something that they translated as “That’s definitely going to have a bad ending.” This woman who called the police must have told them to expect the worst possible scenario. What she saw in her rearview mirror as she drove away obviously left her shaken and afraid…and left me very grateful that I didn’t see what she and others saw.

I spent the next 10 minutes assuring her and all the officers and rescue people that I was fine, that Sammy was fine, and that all I really needed was the nice young man in the AT&T truck to do what he was waiting patiently to do. They quickly dispersed, probably equal parts happy to see that their expertise was not needed and possibly glad to have a little innocent excitement in the middle of their shift.

The AT&T guy and the county cop hooked up my car and pulled me out and helped me do a walk-around to make sure that Sammy was still really in one piece. I thanked them both profusely. I’ve also just finished e-mailing AT&T and letting them know that they hire some damned fine people down here in the Tarheel State. And then I was on my way.

Of course, anyone driving past that part of I-95 after the fact probably stared at the loop-de-loop streaks of rubber along the roadway and the big streaks through the muddy ditch on the side of the road and wondered what the frig happened there. Let me assure you, it was just Sammy leaving his signature across the interstate. Honestly, he’s turned into such a diva.

Seriously, though, thank you to whatever patron saint or universal glitch that’s out there, watching over white wolves and their anthropomorphized cars. Thank you to the stunningly fast response of the EMTs, firefighters, and police officers who, thankfully, were not necessary. Even thank you to the woman who started all of this mess. Thank you for coming back, for apologizing, and for caring, in stark contradiction to the opinion I had of you as I was spinning right round, baby.

And to the drivers who were caught up in all the excitement…believe me, I’m sorry. I know what I would have been saying if I’d been caught in the backup, no matter how short it may have been. So, sorry about that delay. I hope you all got to where you were heading without any further delays. I promise I will do my best to refrain from causing any further interstate altercations on my way home.

As for Sammy? He is almost perfect. Seems that his recent alignment is a little off-kilter now, but other than that, he’s just very dirty. So it’s a power wash for him in the morning, followed by a fresh tank of gas for lunch. As for me? I think I’m going to enjoy the next few days traveling no faster than my two legs can carry me. I’m quite through with my attempts at impersonating a dreidel, thank you very much.

So I griped and complained about the snow all Saturday. Then Sunday came and went, and nothing. Why? Because I spent a large portion of that day, digging out from under all that you see to your right. When all was said and done, we got a little more than 2 feet. That might have just been the final measurements due to drifting, though. The numbers people on the telly were saying more along the lines of 16 inches. My arm muscles disagree…but that’s okay.

When all was said and done, I felt much better once Sammy was no longer being held prisoner by the snow. So Sunday evening was spent relaxing and being in a far more agreeable mood.

Then the news came from WaPo: All federal agencies will be closed on Monday.

I’m not a federal employee, but I help make federal employees look spiffy. So if they’re not there, we’re not really needed. Which meant that my company closed for the day as well. And the silver lining shone through brightly.

So where the heck was I all day? At the movie theater. Watching Dances with Na’vi Avatar. For 3 hours. My butt still hasn’t woken up. Which is why I’m getting ready to go exercise…and maybe even attempt to process how I feel about this movie. I’m still not sure. I did, however, make sure this was available as soon as I got back online. Seriously, Sigourney Weaver as a feline alien must become part of my collection. As soon as possible.

Oh, one more thing. Expect some serious 50BC09 posting in a little while. Maybe not now. But soon. And for the rest of…er…the year?