Storm day

There are only two parts of today's storm I haven't enjoyed.

1) Speculating on which part of our lot will be splattered by our neighbour's oversized Norway maple should it decide to fall. In a tropical cyclone, odds are that it will fall this way if it does. The chief question here is where to park my car to avoid the tree.

2) Microwaves have one crowning virtue: their ability to reheat leftover coffee without having it taste like, well, reheated coffee.

The crowning (pun intended) moment of our obligatory storm walk to check out the beach was the tree that fell just over a block in front of us. At first I thought the noise came from behind us, so I whirled around. My wife was walking without glasses (and so could see more than ten feet away) and spotted the tree. It sounded exactly like an auto collision.

Our town's position relative to the storm should spare us northeast winds. The harbour is only open in that direction, so the brunt of the weather is landing on the beach. Surf's definitely up, but some spoilsports with blue lights are out there keeping everyone--surfers included--off the beach.

It's too bad more Americans aren't educated in the Beaufort scale of winds, because it's perfectly suited to a day like this, with variable velocity. When we took our walk, it was about Force 8. Typically, it takes Force 10 to uproot trees, and since trees have definitely been uprooted we may have had Force 10 gusts.
It seems to be a little stronger now, but the rain's stopped.

Enough. Pause now in case we lose power again.

Unchristmas, and a shuffle with the idiots

In the end, we worked out our own unchristmas. First, the early show at Loew's on Tremont in Boston (The King's Speech, which I recommend even if you're not a Brit). Then, instead of Chinese, we did Middle Eastern at the Black Seed, which is up the street and a steady favourite of mine. Home again, holiday nap, chat with the daughter and a French-Canadian film (betcha didn't know there were such things, eh?) Les Doights Croches.

Since my spouse was working today, last week I began to plan a Boxing Day dinner. Nothing remarkable, except that we don't cook a lot of whole chickens around here. On Thursday, it was clear there wouldn't be room in our modest fridge for the chicken and everything else, so I decided to put off buying some of the ingredients until today.

This wasn't a good idea. Although there was snow on the horizon Thursday, the weather media panic machine had yet to work itself up to a berserk frenzy. By the time they hit that level of stridency, it was already christmas day and finding a roaster in these parts would have to wait.

For a moment, I considered running over to Stop and Shop, where you get the vintage sort of panic disaster shopper. These are the people who go as a couple and fill two shopping carts: one has twenty bags of potato chips and one bag of ice-melt. The other has two dozen two litre bottles of soft drink, a snow shovel, and three pounds of deli meat. For whatever reason, I thought I'd have better luck at our local, regional-type market.

Things were probably worse at Stop and Shop, but only because they have more floor space. I can't say this is true of all affluent towns, since I've only lived in this one, but the Stop and Shoppers with the soft drinks and chips were one up on the average person in this scrum: they had a clue what they were about. It was clear, from the various overheard conversations, that most of these people hadn't seen the inside of a grocery since the last weekend disaster: hmm, that would be the water thingy back at the end of April. That one was simple, because all they had to buy was water. This one required them to make choices. The line moved along all the same, and it was enlivened by the utter helplessness of so many of these people. It probably didn't occur to them that they already had all that they needed in their homes: they would need the help to explain that to them.

Each winter's first serious snow has always been good for some unintended comedy, but it used to be out on the roads. The winter storm disaster culture has ensured us hilarity indoors and out.