Forecast for tonight through the weekend is intermittent snowpocalypse, which just started.

It's SNOWING!

Scalloped potatoes and spinach bread for breakfast*. Life is not so bad.

Also, Val Kilmer is fifty today. Congratulations GenX. We have officially lived longer than we ever expected to.

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*TBRE brought it home. Quoth she: "I think the secret ingredient is butter." Quoth me: gnarsh chomp mwar!

*passes out the tea and cookies*

16 degrees this morning, 6 with windchill. We're waiting for the snowpocalypse.

tea today: peppermint
teacup today: the little orange and white Chinese teacup I got at a Chinese grocery in Ann Arbor.

Up too late last night and awoke too early this morning for somebody who's supposed to be sleeping off a sore throat, but I kind of forgot to eat dinner yesterday (yeah, swallowing when your throat hurts sucks) so I got woken up by being hungry. Leftover oatmeal is becoming blueberry oatcakes as we speak, though, never fear, and I am unlikely to waste away.

Tonight, we expect a great big snowdump (It's currently beating up my friends in Maryland and Virginia) and I plan to spend today on more reading. Didn't get as much done yesterday on that front as I wanted--got distracted with side projects, Shadow Unit-related work, and talking to friends about Major Life Issues. Like you do sometimes.

Also made the last December Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Day presents, which I need to package up today and mail out on Monday. Or maybe next Monday, because the nice thing about DNDGGD is that it's not any particular day at all, so as long as you get it done in December, you're all good!

I did read a wonderful very short story yesterday, though. Sherman Alexie's "Distances," which is science fiction and four pages long and one the best after-the-bomb stories I have ever read. Simply amazing. I wish I'd known of its existence when I was writing my comments on my story in JJA's Wastelands anthology, because it would have affected what I said.

But now you know, so you have no excuses. (I've read Alexie's YA fiction, but this is my first time through The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and it's just as good as everybody says it is. Not that he needs my hard sell)

I read it, told everybody on twitter how much I loved it, and promptly went back and read it again. It reminds me of, oh. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." Except different and wonderful. But it hits me in the same place, and it's as tiny and perfect and beautifully made.

Got thirty farm fresh eggs at the agricultural co-op on the corner when I went in to see if they carry Ace's dog food (they don't) so I suspect lunch is going to be an omelette. *g*

And now breakfast is ready, so it's time to microwave my beloved barley neck pillow and start that reading.  Who would have thought I'd choose a career that was nothing but homework?

Ahh, tea. Today's tea is gunpowder green mixed with peppermint, as a cure for shoveling. Today's teacup is Paraphilias Involving Bunnies, which I have had since just before college.

Today's morning temperature is 32 degrees on the dot.

And now I am on the job, having been up since seven doing needful snow-related things (and making tea).

It was pretty out there--white snow, black dog, grey morning. (Wasn't that a Joy Chant book back in the day? I should really reread The Grey Mane of Morning one of these years.)

Here, have a holiday card image:


And here's one I took for buymeaclue, in which we can see how inconvenient a long coat can be in heavy snow:

The Snowpocalypse glows in the dark.



It's very bright out there, as it usually is during a snowstorm at night anywhere where there's ambient lighting.

The Snowpocalypse has a high albedo.

Here's the rest. Really, it's more pinkish than green out there. And some of the photos are blurry, because I was handholding extremely long exposures. Sorry about that.

I wish I could have gotten a shot of the icicles on the streetlight down the block, but of course the light washes itself out.

SNOWPOCALYPSE!

It's SNOWING!

Time to break out the winter playlist.

As I posted that last post, I looked out my living room window.

I have the start of sunset, a complete seven-color rainbow against an ash-colored sky, yellow stormlight, and forking lightning.

Simultaneously.

Wow.

It's 9:24 at night, but because of the city lights reflecting thrugh the clouds and snow, it looks like dawn.

If I weren't still sniffling pathetically, I would go out for a walk. And ponder bookish things.

I guess I will have to do it from my sofa.

Oh, the hardship.

Thundersnow.

With visible lightning.

Thunderstorm.

With lightning.

(!)

It's snowing!

Since it's bucketing down "wintry mix" out there (what was wrong with "sleet" and "freezing rain" and "nor'easter" and "slush storm," anyway? Did we need a euphemism ,for some reason? Eskimos may not have a hundred words for snow, but Yankees sure do.) and since eljay just doled me out another loyalty icon, I was feeling seasonal, and broke out the December pics.

I am still (yes, still, how long has it been now?) stuck on that last scene (One. Last. Scene.) in "King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree." Which means it did not get finished tonight, though there was lots of futzing about on the internets and general time wasting. (On the other hand, I wrote about 1600 words of nonfiction today, and did a whole bunch of other stuff, including web page maintenance and correcting a small itty bitty insignificant timeline flaw in the Secrit Projekt and so forth, so it's not like I didn't earn my keep.) I am in that frustrating stage where I really feel like writing, and I want the cookie of finishing a story.

I think I'm going to bail on climbing tomorrow and stay home and have a major three-day introvert fit and read books and goof off and see if that clears out the noise in my head enough to get some fiction-related work done, because hello with the overscheduled.

And if perchance this story and the other story *did* fall out of my head, then maybe some of the other stuff I have been asked for would follow.... and I could be like, edging up to caught up coming into January. And Chill. Which I fear.

The annoying side product of wanting to write and not having anything to write about is that I'm bored. And it's one o'clock in the morning. I would just go to bed, of course, but since I've been moderately insomniac the last few nights (and am not right now sleepy at all), that sounds like a recipe for tail chasing.

Well, hey, I wanted to read Carmen Dog, didn't I?

Also, this is just to let you all know that while I, for one, welcome our new Russian overlords, I've also started using this livejournal archive tool, and it wurks gud.

330.3 miles to Lothlorien.
Maybe the cat will be entertaining tomorrow and I can tell you about that.

It's snowing!

It's 87 degrees out.

Do not want.

the freezing rain has turned into Blizzard.

Category 5 Super Typhoon Ioke provokes the evacuation of Wake Island. Ioke, before it crossed the International Date Line and became a typhoon, was the strongest (wind velocity) and the most intense (millibars of pressure) hurricane ever recorded in the Central Pacific.

Here's the JTWC advisory.

*
(thanks to allocthon for the heads-up)

Waterspouts spotted near the Tappan Zee bridge; dangerous storm warning for Eastern New York and New Jersey; tornados expected.

Be careful out there, okay, guys? I mean, this is great stuff for the next Promethean Age book, but let's keep the casualties fictional.

Cecilia Fire Thunder, who is the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, is not pleased about recent events in South Dakota.

So, she's trying to start up a Planned Parenthood on the Pine Ridge Reservation. (They will be able to provide abortions, if necessary, because they've got sovereign authority over their own land. However, Planned Parenthood also provides basic reproductive healthcare to people without insurance.)

If you want to mail donations/support to the reservation, you may do so at:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

OR: and this may be preferred, due to mail volume:

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

Make it clear that the donation is for the Planned Parenthood clinic. At the moment, until further information says otherwise, checks can be made out to Oglala Sioux Tribe.

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nogoodnik offers another suggestion for collective action.

Hi, Bill? Should I wear the red socks, or the black???

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On a lighter note, angevin2 manages to rhyme "atextual" and "heterosexual."

Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Though Orsino's denial may vex you all,
The cure, sad to say, is atextual:
Though he falls for Cesario,
The closing scenario
Lets him say he's still heterosexual.

(more, if you follow the link)

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NB to the people who just added me: I don't usually post this much in a day, I promise. Soon, we will return you to your regularly scheduled intermittent muttering about deadlines. In the meantime, please feel free to introduce yourselves. There's some ginger ale in the wet bar, but I think we're out of booze after last week's Anthony Burgess smut party.