I left work at midday yesterday so I could play in the snow with my boys. We had a snowball fight in the backyard, but the powder wasn’t sticky enough to roll a big ball for a snowman. We left our yard and walked through the neighborhood, and over to the nearby grocery store, where I bought some fresh chocolate chip cookies for dessert after dinner.

The blanket of snow survived all yesterday (the temperature stayed in the 20s), and it will probably stay for most of today, too. Schools are closed again, so the boys have another chance to play in the stuff. But I’ll stay at work all day because national deadlines don’t get put off because one state gets a snowstorm.

Here are some pictures from the event:

In the neighborhood:

My drive to work:

View from the offices:

Angels by my boys:

Bullgrit

The big news around here is the impending snow storm. As I write this, it is Monday night, 9:30 — it’s cold, 43 degrees, and a bit rainy. It’s supposed to get down to 31 degrees over night, with an 80% chance of snow. It was in the 20s degrees a couple of nights last week, and even reached 17 degrees one morning.

Back in November, it snowed very briefly over one night leaving a dusting on the ground in parts of the area (not at our house, though). All evidence of the precipitation was melted away by noon that day. But the snowfall expected tonight is supposed to be 2-4 inches and to last all day. If this occurs, it will effectively shut down our city for a day or two.

Southern states just don’t have the infrastructure to handle big snow and ice. We have some plow trucks and some salt and sand for the roads, but it’s just not what states like Illinois or Colorado have. And before you Illinoisans and Coloradans laugh at us, answer this: how prepared are you for a hurricane?

The grocery stores around here were busy all day long. Bread, milk, and toilet paper were in short supply. Batteries? We buy batteries at the approach of hurricanes, so we’re usually already well stocked for the once a decade “real” snow storm.

Our boys are excited over the chance of snow. They talked about the coming event all day Monday, and it was the last thing they mentioned before falling asleep at night. They’ll probably both wake up at 5:00 in the morning wanting to see the snow. God, I hope not.

I’ll post an update sometime Tuesday, when we actually see the snow.

Update: It’s 6:45 Tuesday morning; the boys got up at 6:00 wanting to know if it had snowed. It had, and it is still coming down. Looking out our windows, we can see the thick blanket of white stuff glowing in the light of the streetlamp across the street. We’ve probably got a couple of inches already. Calfgrit8 said, “This is the most amazing snow I’ve ever seen!” Our schools are closed.

Bullgrit

I mentioned how I was getting rid of my “nerd shoes” last year (exactly a year ago from this post, by coincidence). To replace them, I bought a pair of blue, black, and white Nikes. I thought they were a step away from the nerd look, but Cowgrit thought it wasn’t a step far enough – they were still mostly white, not enough blue or black. She conceded that the new shoes were better, but they just weren’t better enough.

Well, I wore those new shoes for a year, and I felt fine. Recently, though, they’ve started squeaking when I walk. I’ve never had a pair of Nike’s start squeaking, no matter how worn out they became. So it was time to buy another pair of shoes.

I went to a shoe store during my lunch hour last week and hunted for new, cool Nike sneakers. I found a pair: gray, black, blue, with only a single stripe of white on the bottom of the sides. I was rather proud and happy with these shoes, and I expected Cowgrit to approve. She did.

The next morning, dressed for work (sneakers, faded blue jeans, red long sleeve t-shirt), I presented myself to Cowgrit. “Like the shoes?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “they’re much better. They look cool.”

“Great,” I said, beaming with pride for picking out the shoes all by myself, “I like them, too.”

“But now we need to work on your pants,” she said.

“What? What’s wrong with my pants?”

“Dark colors are in. Especially in the winter.”

I scrunched up my face in exasperation. My jeans were faded to almost white.

“It’s OK,” she soothed, “for now. You look OK for today.”

Sigh. One day, maybe one day, I can dress like the cool kids.

Bullgrit

When I was around 12-14 years old, I had a “friend” who was a pure psycho. Notice I put the word in quotation marks — I actually considered him a friend for about a year, and he considered me a friend for two or three years.

At first, we had fun together. He lived in my neighborhood, and we played some Star Wars action figures together, and played Atari together. He also introduced me to two of my favorite games: RISK and Dungeons & Dragons.

In RISK, he would always put a token on the corner of the game board and say it was his nuclear bomb. If I started winning the game, he’d “set it off” by hitting the corner and overturning the whole board, throwing pieces and cards all over the room. I could never win a game of RISK against him, and I gave up playing with him after about half a dozen tries.

In D&D, he was a power-mad Dungeon Master. If you aren’t familiar with D&D, I can’t describe the type to you. If you are familiar with D&D (or any role playing game), you probably already know the type.

Fortunately, I stopped playing either game with him, and I found other gamers with more self control and respect for others. The last time I ever went into his house alone, or really had any personal, solo contact with him, he chased me around his kitchen table with a butcher knife.

Yep, that’s right, my “friend” chased me with a big knife. Even at the time, I didn’t think he was really trying to cut me, but I did feel that if I didn’t show enough fear, and try to run from him, he probably would have hurt me just to get the reaction he wanted. He wanted me afraid of him right then, for reasons I couldn’t and can’t fathom. (Out of young stupidity, I didn’t tell my mom about that incident until about 20 years later.)

For the next couple of years, he spoke of me as a friend even though I really didn’t have much to do with him on a personal level. I had new and better and non-psycho friends with whom to hang out, talk about girls, and play games with (not necessarily in that order).

A few years later, a couple of my then friends met this old friend (two separate and unrelated encounters), and they related how they thought he was very strange. I graduated high school with this guy, and then he went into the navy. I can only hope the military discipline straightened him out, or maybe he’s sitting on death row somewhere.

Bullgrit