Bring that snow.

New Snow, Northern Michigan, 2.08.08

End of February, starting to hear lots of folks say things like "I am so bored with winter" and "I am so bored with winter." But this has been a nice one, I think, for the way it, like, keeps renewing itself, you know? The winter melts on you, leaves standing water in your yard, looks ugly, and then snows all over again and some part of you says "yay, snow!" That reaction doesn't happen when you just have snow every day; it's the mud/snow cycle of this winter that keeps bringing that feeling back for me.

I haven't been posting much lately, but life has proceeded regardless. For example, I have been busy with my winter sport of mice-killin, though I appear to have scared off, or smushed, all my opponents. There is not nearly as much sport in mousing as there is in mole-hunting, which requires a high degree of judgment, sensitivty to the rodent-mind, and cold-blooded wilfulness. Mouse hunting just requires peanut butter. Still, it passes the time.

So here is a snow day, then. Snow day #5, the first one to officially make my summer shorter by one day. That is one long bike ride I will not get to take now. Still, it is hard to argue against a snow day. They're gifts, where you don't have to do nothing you don't want to do apart from the occasional time-out for your kids. So far, I've spent most of the morning looking up the TAB and Youtube covers for REM ("Driver 8" and "Talk About the Passion"), Big Star ("I'm in Love with a Girl"--but I tell my girl it's "The June-y Song"), and that "Falling Slowly" song from Once (which is a little cheesey, but it's of the moment).

And now the kids are asleep and I'll either go skiing or read a little more of the new Junot Diaz so that I can hopefully, retroactively, remove some of my demerits with my club. Probably not. This is a club that does not forget.

And if you like The Smiths, I found this pretty awesome Youtube of a guy showing how he recreates the effects for "How Soon is Now." I've watched it about four times now, I think.

New new low

So our power goes off for twenty minutes today and at first my desktop is working a little funny and then I "fix" it (re-boot once or twice) but then for some reason my network card won't work. Laptop runs fine over the wireless, but the desktop connection's "broke," as they say. How weird that a power surge would just mess up one part of my setup but not, like, other parts. I guess tomorrow is the day I buy a surge protector and an external hard drive and hope that it fixes itself over night.

Makes me miss back before computers when all you had was, um, nothing. I guess I don't really miss that all that much. Growing up in a small town, I would have loved to have a link to the outside world. As it was, I didn't even learn about the Talking Heads until I moved to Ft. Wayne at the age of 13. Thirteen before I heard the Talking Heads!! Not sure how I managed in little old Marshall, Michigan. Such an isolated town. It was so small the neighborhood bully was also your best friend because there just weren't enough kids to go around. We liked Ozzy and Molly Hatchet because that's all the one record store sold. The entire theater stood on the seats at the end of Star Wars because we had never seen anything like it. We played baseball because we didn't know about cricket. Didn't know about cricket!! We probably still would have played baseball even if we knew about cricket, though.

One of my dreams is to start a cricket club at school. That would be hilarious.

I'm gonna go make some tea.