Snowmageddon, 2010

Yeah--its a LOT of snow. I mean a LOT of snow. The accumulation in our yards was right at the average of 30 inches...

We awoke on Saturday to a power outage which I didn't sweat too much because I can deal with no television. And also because I have candles and books and radios and knitting and our house is heated by natural gas and we have a gas stove... I also have a zillion-band hand-crank generator radio with flashlight, siren, whatever. Allegedly it will also charge a number of cell phones---but not one of them would be manufactured by Apple....

It was cold. Cold. We were horribly teased with power for about 45 minutes (which like a good scout I put to use immediately charging my priority devices ( no jokes, please), my husband did not). That last sentence is a direct challenge to your ability to apply Boolean logic.

I'd like to say that just now, the Saints are having to work very hard for little reward and that makes me happy. They have missed more than a couple 3rd and short efforts and I love that. Its gotta be demoralizing for them; awww...

Back to Snowmageddon. So the power went back out. We'd discovered that we'd overlooked a serious issue in reducing our carbon footprint by installing electronic thermostats: they're powered by AC and so our gas heat...? Not happening. Our gas fireplace was somewhat helpful for the a range of about 5 feet where the flame would radiate---but the blower? AC powered. Did I mention the roads were REALLY impassable? And that there was an order that ONLY public safety personnel and hospital staff traveling to work were allowed to be on the roads. So.

We planned to (and did) cook some soup before the sun went down; it could be easily reheated whenever... candles distributed, made plans for all of the Robert Mullen family to sleep en masse in our budoir and have Rob's Mom sleep in our family room in that radius of warmth from the fireplace. (Saints just scored another damn field goal going into the half).

About that time a stalwart neighbor knocked on our door. This would be the stalwart neighbor who is a senior Veep with Marriott. And they had happened to snag enough rooms for four neighborhood households... given that the expected low was less than 10 degrees, we accepted the kindness without a moment's hesitation.

And what a warm night it was--- when we arrived the early bunch (you know, those guys that had already shoveled their cars out...) had assembled an attractive bar and segregated the kids from the bigger kids and so it was that we drank a LOT of wine. And revealed far too much personal information which was way better than revealing flesh which appeared imminent at one point.... there was group a capella singing. Talking Heads. The Kinks. Stones. Billy Joel. They tried to make me sing Devo but I refused.

The morning dawned really early, I must say. After breakfast we all packed up to move out learning that power was stabilized in our 'hood. I was driving the lightest duty vehicle of all and I could NOT scale the first incline out of the hotel lot. And I had really had enough slides, near spin-outs and quarter mile drives in reverse to avert disaster the night before. We slid back to the hotel and here we are.

Tonight brings us the Super Bowl, The Who and Macallen 18, straight up. I have put on my jammies to reduce the likelihood that I'll sally back down to the bar for another glass. But you know, I really shoulda' brought my own bottle from home.

Safe. Warm. Happy. In my only remark about SuperBowl commercials I'll tell you that the Docker's spot featuring too many men in their skivvies, Anna said, "now that's 'Pants on the Ground' EXTREME". Kids rock.

Relatively speaking, Townsend sounds WAY better than Daltry; very surprised at how ...absent... his voice seems. I don't know how he'll make it through their upcoming Quadrophenia tour... the performance had to be collossal live, though---great production, fantastic "stage". Latifah did herself proud pre-game but I thought Carrie Underwear looked a bit too Elvis and that she really struggled to hit a lot of the notes at the expense of her usually fierce tone and support. Whitney still owns Super Bowl National Anthem performances. Have I said that Townsend rocked? Oh. Yeah.

Even after a zillion different looks at it, who the hell knows even now who recovered that loose ball from the second half kick-off? Oh. It's ON.