SNOW!!!!

So we finally got a for-real snow event yesterday. 

OR DID WE?

Six to eight inches of snow were expected. The district decided to close the schools as of Tuesday night. At ten in the morning Wednesday, not a flake had fallen. At eleven, birds were chirping. At one p.m. my Windows system software said "Snowing now," but my actual windows told a different story. It was starting to look like a non-event. Not that our local bloated school administration cared. They hadn't had a snow day off yet this winter, and by God they were going to get one. 

We northerners like to make fun of how southerners panic when a little bitty snow squall shows up, but aren't we a lot wimpier than we used to be? I know it's our inner Yorkshiremen that make us look back and say how we trekked through five feet of snow during a storm that made the Children's Blizzard of 1888 look like a gentle dusting -- but when I was a kid I'm pretty sure the schools didn't close before the snow even started. 

There may be reasons for this. More children live in single-parent households now, and in houses where both parents work, and if there's no adult home to fetch the kid because the weather got bad fast, what can the school do? Better to leave them home in the first place. 

Also, at least in theory, weather forecasting is better now than it was when we were tots, what with the News 10 Dopplercast 5000 or whatever your local station advertises. So sure, it may be sunny and warm now, but you wait -- Dopplercast 5000 says blizzard by lunchtime, and blizzard it shall be. 

Well, at last, at 2:30: 

An hour or so later it had turned to rain. Some of the neighbors' kids got some sledding in:

And this morning:

It rained all night and the temperature got up over forty. In other words, not only was there barely any snow in this snow event, but the weather wiped out the snow we already had.

I can live with it. My back didn't have to brave the shovel, I didn't have to pay Piers Plowman who does the driveway, and the children got their vacation day. But I can't remember the last time a forecast was this far off. 

There's a local guy who does weather forecasting on Facebook, and I don't know what his story is, but he's good. He uses data from weather services all over the hemisphere, and knows how to do the math. Even he got rooked on this one. At three in the afternoon he wrote: 

This one I did not see coming. We are experiencing warm air advection which is warm air approaching and over riding the cold dense air in place. Typically this produces moisture in the midlevel atmosphere and would produce precipitation with upward forcing motion. In our case snowfall.

However, at this point it has plateaued and has created a dry slot bubble in the midlevel of the atmosphere as wintry precipitation is in the process of transforming to rainfall. I am not sure how long before the dry slot bubble fills back in with precipitation.

The end result is we may experience this dry slot in the weather for a couple of hours. Precipitation likely returns as a mix or rainfall.... Weather can be fickle.

You can say that again, brother!

A guy could get kilt.

Saw a fellow in church wearing a skirt yesterday. Of course it was not a skirt, but a kilt; it was plaid and had one of those crazy sideways/diagonal belts visible under his jacket. 

I suppose there was a time when you would always assume a bearded man in a skirt was a Scotsman of some sort. Now, however hirsute the chap may be, your first thought could be: It's a guy who thinks he's a girl. That just seems to be the going idea these days.

Looking way back, however, history had lots of men in skirt or "skort" outfits or the like. For example: 

Ancient Egypt: Everyone wore the shendyt, a skirt-like wraparound loincloth. Couldn't tell the girls from the guys by the clothes. I guess you could look at their chests.

Ancient Rome: Lots of long tunics, belted or not, or the toga virilis, a very manly, masculine sort of working toga, not a dress at all. Still no pants on the horizon. 

Greece, 6th century BC: First pants spotted. That is, not that they were decorated with spots; they emerged for use by horsemen around this time, as reported by Greeks. Eventually pants would become a land-office business. 

Scotsmen, 1700s: Started back up with the skirts early in the century. Theory has emerged that they just were waiting for someone to make a remark so they could kick some ass. 

Then we move into the modern era. Men in skirts included:

1950s: Scotsmen, Milton Berle

1960s: Scotsmen, normal men turned into Scotsmen by aliens

1970s: Scotsmen, Benny Hill

1980s: Scotsmen, New Wave bands, professional transvestites

2020s: Scotsmen, TikTok influencers, many others

I'm going to stick with pants, personally. No skirts for me. I look bad enough in shorts as it is. And considering what a hash I made of learning to play the recorder in grammar school, there is no way I can ever play the bagpipes. It would take an invasion by alien blancmanges to make that happen.

The test.

I've been feeling like crap. Worse than crap. Since Saturday, like day-old crap. My throat hurt. My upper palette felt like I'd been playing the Bonham drum solo from "Moby Dick" on it, and my uvula like Charles Laughton had been kicking it like the bells of Notre Dame. My breath was short. I was itchy all over. Actually, really itchy on my lower abdomen. Some kind of new creeping crud? Roving jock itch? Sounds like the worst Scotsman you could meet. "I be Jock McItch from Clan McItch, and I be roving across this abdomen."

Maybe this stream of thought will demonstrate that I was not sleeping very well, either. 

By fortune, I had been in the drugstore last week and, on a whim, picked up a box of COVID-19 tests. My wife was a little concerned that I might have the Chinese Death Virus, and suggested I take the test. Well, why not? Let's see if the Wuhan Wonders scored another goal against the Americans, shall we?

This was in the drugstore in the seasonal aisle, near the towels and swimsuits and pool toys and whatnot for travel. I doubt you're supposed to show the TSA your negative COVID test to get to your gate, so I suppose we're on the honor system. Still, it's good to know that you're not sick before you leave home. It's bad enough when you get sick at your destination and have to get home that way.

By the way, it's weird how pharmacies used to double as malt shops, but is it any weirder that now they double as baby shopping malls? You can get your meds, makeup, shampoo, milk, chocolate bars, seasonal clothing, greeting cards, toilet paper, and potato chips all in one go. 

Anyway. 

I liked taking the test, because it was like a junior chemist set. 

Better than a pregnancy test, because I didn't have to pee on anything. There was nothing in the instructions against peeing, but I didn't think it would help. On that topic, swishing the swab around my nostrils was rather like cleaning out two tiny little toilet bowls. Satisfying, but disgusting. 

Next the swab goes in the little vial, swishes around there, then the vial drips out into the test strip--exactly three drops. ("Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.") Then wait 15 minutes. If you look before 15 minutes, you could get a false report; if you wait more than 30, ditto. So this is all very scientific. 

And at last, the results:

No Chinese Death Virus! 

So why have I been feeling so sick? Well, as it turned out, the itch on my abdomen resolved more clearly into three large welts, so I think I was bitten or stung by something poisonous -- one of nature's little bastards, like sweat bees or something -- while I was out with the dogs. I have a sensitivity, if not an outright allergy, to yellowjacket venom, and I wonder if it caused an allergic reaction that has given me allergy-like symptoms (not a closing of the throat as with anaphylaxis, but a mild version, with a sore throat). Or it could just be a damn cold. Those are going around, I hear.

So, I'm slathering up with steroid cream and calamine lotion, taking pseudoephedrine and cough drops and diphenhydramine and lots and lots of coffee, and soldiering on. What more can a man do?

The lurking shed.

You ever see a shed that looks larger than its house?

I couldn't get the whole house in this iPhone photo, but trust me, there is precious little more to it than what you see. And lurking behind: Shed.

It is not the largest shed I have ever seen, but the house really is a cottage. There's no one in it just now; the people are gone, the for-sale sign is out front. I'd guess it's just a four-room home, big enough for one, maybe a little tight for more. And if it gets too crowded, someone can always sleep in the shed.

Not that I think anyone has ever done it, though, although I suppose you can if the weather isn't too cold. But assuming that's not the purpose of the shed, why did this tiny home have such a large shed?

Lately I've been hearing about the "she shed," supposedly the counterpart to the "man cave." I don't think this really works. I don't know any sheds that have large sofas, cable for a wide-screen TV, WiFi, fan posters, pool tables, card tables, refrigerators, and chip bowls. If you have such a thing, it is no longer a shed, it is a clubhouse. It's no more a shed than the man cave is an actual cave. And if you have a she shed. then you need a real shed, because you still need a place to put the tools and flower pots and lawn mower. Then they start calling you "Two Sheds," and that's just silly.

I personally wound up with no shed at all, as living in the Outer Boroughs convinced my wife that if we had a shed we would wind up with strange teenagers drinking and smoking pot in it. I suppose that's possible wherever you live, but we left the city years ago. I could be Fred "No Sheds" Key, I suppose.

But if I did have a shed, I wouldn't get one the same size of my house, in a gloomy color, and park it in the backyard so it looked like it was sneaking up on my house to eat it.

Stranger than fiction.

Well, following the conclusion of the novella Bob the Mage last week, I'd hoped to keep Fiction Friday! going by offering you a new short story today. Sadly, paying work has interfered with all the fun again. Damn you, mortgage, you slave driver!

In any event, listening to the news yesterday reminded me that truth is stranger than fiction, for the obvious reason that we expect our fiction to be realistic, and sometimes reality is not. Reality doesn't play by your rules! It's unreal!

Just yesterday there were several things in the news that seemed to defy reasonable expectations, such as:

Madonna turned 60.

Now, you can take this as proof that Billy Joel was right, but let's face it, thirty-odd years ago people would have expected some awful disease or overdose to take out Madonna, if not the director of one of her movies, but here she is. Heck, people who thought she might still be having birthdays at this point would have just assumed that it wouldn't make the news at this point. (I don't want to sound mean, but Toni Basil turned 70 on September 22, 2013, and it didn't make headlines.)

Speaking of headlines, we have: Newspapers versus Trump.

As libertarian mag Reason put it,  "Newspapers team up to tell Trump they aren't colluding against him." Apparently the president not likely newspapers is akin to him sending storm troopers to burn them down. Wait until they find out that Trump HATES "Garfield"!

Roundup in Cheerios.

Traces of glyphosate, the weed killing chemical found in popular weed killer Roundup, were found in some popular General Mills cereals, including Cheerios. Which is not a popular additive in cereal. However, isn't it fitting somehow that a product like Roundup could turn up in a famously round cereal?

You know, for kids!

In other food news, thieves in Georgia made off with $100,000 worth of ramen noodles, which by my back-of-the-envelope calculation is enough for 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meals, give or take a few.

Of course the sad news of the day was the passing of Aretha Franklin. I had a lot of admiration for her voice and her style, although I can't say I'm a fan of soul music the way many white people were pretending to be yesterday. I don't mean that no white person can be a fan of soul, not at all, but I'm just way too square. I'm so white that the most interesting part of the phrase "sriracha mayonnaise" to me is "mayonnaise." I'm just hopeless.

Anyway, I loved her in The Blues Brothers but not in Blues Brothers 2000, because you couldn't love anyone in Blues Brothers 2000. Her hardscrabble character from the first movie is inexplicably selling luxury cars in the second because -- why? Because it's obvious that Dan Ackroyd and John Landis were the only guys in America who didn't get the first movie, even less so than ol' snowmen like me. Anyway, it's certainly not Franklin's fault, and I'm sorry to see her go.

Finally, and this is not news from yesterday but I only heard it so it was news to me: A woman in Inverness, Scotland, rescued an injured bumble bee and nursed it back to health, and now they are inseparable. And if that does not have you singing "Eric the Half a Bee," I'm not sure if we can be friends anymore.

So, with facts like these, who needs fiction?

Confess!

A couple of weeks ago I whined about how poorly my Lent is going, and while perusing the archives I found I whined about the same thing two years ago. In both cases I note that I had not yet done my Easter duty, going to Confession. Guess what I still haven't done?

I have not been avoiding it, I really have not. Many Catholics I know do. This is how they tend to picture Confession:

And certainly that's the image most non-Catholics have of it.

This has not been my experience as a Catholic. I find Confession, or Reconciliation (its more modern, more friendly, and also accurate name), to be more like a psychologist's office, but with less judgment.

I'm not kidding about that. I've felt a lot more judgment at the gym than in Confession. I even felt more judgment at my old office, that kale-sucking barn of vocal fry and uptalking. People who say they don't make judgments are being untruthful, for everyone does, but Confession specifically focuses on the sin, not the sinner. Unlike at the gym.

My experience of Confession has always been positive, even with -- sometimes especially with -- the more old-fashioned rigorous priests. I don't go skipping out of church, the weight of the world shrugged off, as many of my coreligionists report. That's never happened to me. I suffer from perfectionism, and so I always feel I have been inadequate in holding up my end of the sacrament. But I feel forgiven, and a little more hopeful.

So why haven't I been yet? Scheduling problems -- really. I may try to sneak in during the week, but to arrange that I have to ask the priest. I'm more of a behind-the-screen confessor, enjoying the anonymity, and that's out the window if I have to ask in advance.

Our local parishes only do regular Confession on Saturdays, unfortunately. When I worked in Manhattan it was easy to go, since they had Confession at lunchtime during weekdays. They need more of it down there. They should probably have 24-hour round-the-clock Confession down there.

Art rocks!

Apparently there is a fellow in the Hudson Valley who spends some time stacking rocks by the side of the road.

And he doesn't just stack rocks on each other; he will also stack rocks on tree stumps as needed.

Who is this mysterious man of mystery?

I have no idea, but a friend of mine says he's seen the man at work. In fact, those stacks of rocks were a good bit higher in the summer, but fall and winter weather have taken a toll.

To take a line from Weird Al, what on earth would make a man decide to do that kind of thing? Is it some kind of art project? A compulsion to impose neatness on a disordered world? Or just something to do while walking the dog?

My first thought was none of these; I wondered if he was a member of the Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.

But I am informed that there may be a spiritual side to the practice; as a Baptist News writer says, "The spiritual practice of stacking stones claims ordinary moments of life for God and invites those who pass by to notice the holy ground on which they already stand."

And yet in today's world, it is impossible to do anything without pissing off somebody:

“It’s not one or two stacks. It’s when you come across an area, particularly in national parks, when there are dozens or hundreds. … The builders don’t necessary understand the landscape around them and don’t understand that others might be bothered by it. When you have one cairn it’s fine, but all the sudden you have 60 … you can be degrading habitat in that area. These fragile ecosystems are being harmed by this proliferation of stacking stone.”

So the problem is one of volume, which I can understand; if one person stubs out a cigarette butt on my lawn today it's no big deal, but if a thousand people do it it's going to look a bit messy.

Besides, rock-stackers, other nature buffs don't want to see any evidence of you:

First, if they're set in a random place, they can lead an unsuspecting hiker into trouble, away from the trail and into a potentially dangerous place. Second, we go to wilderness to remove ourselves from the human saturation of our lives, not to see mementoes from other people's lives.

I'm not going to wade into this rock-stacking controversy -- yay! Another freakin' thing to fight over! -- except to say that a world that has no place for the Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things is a world that's gotten much too serious.

Meeting adjourned.