Better

It's so warm-ish (okay, above zero) that the patio door wasn't frozen shut.  I knew it warmed up yesterday when clouds rolled in and it started to snow.  When it's so bitter cold, it's really too cold to snow plus really cold weather comes with clear skies--no clouds to hold the heat in--so cloudy = warmer + snow.  It's that dry, flaky snow that reminds me of Ivory Snow soap flakes that they used to have when I was a kid.  I don't know what it was made of, maybe shaved Ivory soap bars, but once Mom dampened some, whipped it with the mixer, and artfully globbed it on the Christmas tree branches so it looked like it had snowed inside.  Must have been something out of Women's Day magazine.  Mom was always making something cool or trying something trendy.  Did your mom do stuff like that?  Your grandma?  Looking back I have a string of very cool, strong women in my background.  I'm grateful and I hope I'm keeping the string going.  You too, DD, keep it up, we've got a lot to live up to.

I had big plans to accomplish great things yesterday afternoon.  Instead I sat on the couch, knitting and watching DVR'd TV shows.  I did manage to make an earbud pouch that's the right size (the smaller one), so I'm counting that as an accomplishment, and I finished ripping 3 audiobooks on CDs into iTunes and then got them fonged onto my iPod, that's an accomplishment too.  All that "CD in, wait, CD out" is tiring.  Also boring, just like real work.  And it's not stealing intellectual property either; I just change its format, listen to it, and then delete it.  Hey, if it came on Overdrive or One Click Digital I'd get it that way but these books are that awkward, in between age that they only come on CD so I convert them and then erase them.  Not stealing.

February 15--George H. H. Huey, Dunes and Snow, AZ.  It didn't look right, Dean thought, as he poked the toe of his new cowboy boot at the patch of snow.  It was Arizona.  It was supposed to be hot.  Wasn't Arizona a desert?  Sand dunes didn't get snowed on.  He was sure he looked like an idiot in his Levis, boots, Stetson, snap shirt, string tie, and puffy down jacket in a shade of green too far on the teal side to be manly.  It had been the only jacket in his size at the Stone Gulch General Store where they had stopped in the middle of yesterday's snow storm.

Okay.  Got my lunches, got my ream of paper, gotta shower, dress, and flee.  Later.
--Barbara