Uh, about that Spring...

After a week of nice spring weather, winter reasserted itself. Sunday started cold and gray and rainy, and got colder as the day went on. By dinnertime, the rain had turned to freezing rain and sleet. All that white stuff is accumulated sleet, not snow.

The ice coats everything it touches, and is much, much harder to get off than snow, especially from your windshield and the roads. The main streets in town were treated, but all the side roads, including ours, were left alone. In front of our house, the street looks like an ice rink.

These poor miniature daffodils were just starting to bloom when the storm hit. Luckily for me, they were only the first little clump - the majority have yet to bloom. I am hopeful that the rest survived to bloom once it warms up.

Malcolm is not a fan of the ice (or snow, for that matter). His expression mirrors Benjamin's feeling on the matter as well, since he has had classes canceled 4 times now for bad weather. Lets just hope this is the last of winter and that we can get back to our regularly scheduled spring!

Ice and Jigsaw puzzles

No icepocalypse this morning, lucky for us. The car door was rather stuck, and I had to deice the windows, but the streets were bare and wet, as they say in road reports. The northern part of the state was not so lucky, however, and many thousands of people are without power. On my drive in to work this morning, I saw convoys of electric company trucks heading north to help.

Here at work in the past month, we have been working on jigsaw puzzles. I think the idea was to give patrons something to work on, but in practice it has been staff, taking a break from real work. Yes, I am one of those staff members. I love jigsaw puzzles, for a variety of reasons. First of all, they remind me of childhood vacations. Between Christmas and New Year's, we would set up a large folding table in the family room, spread out a 1000+ piece puzzle, and get to work. There was a very set order of work to be followed - first, all the pieces must be turned right-side up, any pieces that were already/still stuck together taken apart (mustn't have any cheating!) and the edges separated. Next, all the edges pieces must be put together before any of the picture can be started. Then, the real work could begin, and we each would choose a section or figure within the puzzle to work on. The puzzles we did were usually these strange French cartoons, semi-pornographic, if cartoons of little figures with bulbous noses and funny bodies can be pornographic. Although I had some puzzles that were of more "appropriate" subjects - horses, tigers, and so on, I tended to find them boring, not requiring enough effort to be worth the trouble. I mean, it was just a photograph, with a single subject, and the pieces were too big.

In the puzzles we worked, it was great fun to discover where the figure you were working on fit in the larger picture. And that is the second reason I love jigsaw puzzles - getting involved in solving a problem. I love crossword puzzles for the same reason. You have to work at the puzzle, solve it, and get to the end with something complete. For someone with an often over-active mind, it is a great relief to be able to sit and concentrate on a puzzle - it forces the many thoughts and worries that threaten to overwhelm me to the side, give me a break. It is relaxing. In fact, I started working on crossword puzzles every night before bedtime (from a book of the Friday and Saturday New York Times - anything else is too easy and doesn't engage my mind enough ) and since I have been doing so, I find it much easier to fall asleep.

Ice here, ice there

We are on the verge of perhaps another icepocalypse. Because of the threat, state offices opened 2 hours late, and many schools in Little Rock and around the state were closed. I just started carpooling, today in fact, and my carpooling buddy and I made it in 35 minutes, about 20 minutes less than normal. No ice. But it is cold, and wet and there is a good chance that we will be covered in ice by tomorrow morning. If so, and we get to stay home, I plan to play with my new sewing machine. Over Christmas, I bought a pattern and fabric, but I haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet.

Cat interlude

On a day that was cold just about everywhere in this country, and icy here, I figure that we could use a picture of kitties being nice to each other. Cleo likes to give Oliver a licking, cleaning his face and ears. She doesn't really like it the other way round though...Despite the look on his face, Oliver really does like being licked and loved on, until she starts biting.

I tried to get to work this morning, because work was on a 2 hour delay but not closed, but after getting a couple miles down the freeway I turned around. There was an accident or something ahead of me, and once I had waited 20 minutes without moving, I decided that I just don't care enough about work to spend another 1 or 2 to get there! So I baked banana bread for our office Christmas, excuse me, Holiday luncheon (yes, political blandness has struck our office), and ginger cookies for a get-together tomorrow. I also finished a book that has been lingering on my bedside table for far too long, and got all the Christmas cards ready to go out, assuming I can make it to work and the post office box tomorrow.

Icepocalypse!

We are at the beginning of what may turn out to be Icepocalypse 2008. I am borrowing/adapting that phrase from a blogger in Seattle. People here at work are in full panic mode because we have an icy blast bearing down us that may be carrying freezing rain. Oh boy. It is the same in Seattle this week. And in the Northeast. Personally, I don't really care - there is nothing I can do to change the weather - but people at work are worried. They keep assuming that I am not accustomed to bad driving and ice - but I am - I saw it in Texas. The thing is, everyone says that "We are just not used to it here" and then in the next breath, "This happens every year." Well, if it happens every year, maybe they ought to get better prepared! Sigh. Maybe the Governor will close the government early today. That would be nice. And tomorrow. I could use the time to clean the house in preparation for my parents' visit next week...And to bake cookies...