Two more months

Yeah, I'm already sick of winter.  It's cold and dry, and the furnace just drives the indoor humidity down even more, and I've been guzzling water like a nomad lost in the desert because I'll turn to dust otherwise, and I couldn't even build a proper snowman the other day because the snow wasn't wet enough to stick together.

If I could afford a winter home, I'd have one in a place that has humid winters.  Lots of fog, ideally.  The temperature wouldn't matter so much as long as it's humid.  Like maybe Germany.  It's currently more humid in Berlin than it is here and it's slightly warmer.

In the meantime, I'll just keep wearing my boots indoors all the time because it's the only way to keep my feet from turning into blocks of ice.

Could have been worse

I thought the storm would produce more freezing rain than anything else.  I was wrong.  It actually snowed.  Not much, but enough to cover the ground and make everything look nice and pretty.

On Saturday, the power went out and didn't come back until about six hours later.  It got a little cool in the house, but not dangerously cold, so it wasn't a big deal.  Just an inconvenience.

I'm thankful that all the bad things that could have happened didn't.

Echoes of past events

It's widely know that sensual stimuli can bring old memories to the forefront of the mind.  The sense of smell, for example, is strongly connected to memory.

Another stimulus, or so it seems for me, is weather forecasting.  The forecast for Friday has both the high and the low in the thirties, and we're also supposed to get some frozen precipitation of some kind.  Seeing this forecast at this time on the calendar reminded me of the ice storm of 2000.

That one was notable because the Super Bowl was being held in the Georgia Dome the same weekend.  There was freezing rain on Saturday, and it went on for hours and just steadily built up on everything.  Lots of limbs came down at that time, especially pine limbs due to the higher surface area (per unit volume) of pine needles.  The air in my neighborhood was tinged with the sharp scent of pine sap.  It was quite a storm.

Maybe something similar will happen this weekend.  Or maybe it'll fizzle out as forecasts often do.  But it's interesting how something as innocuous as a weather forecast can dredge up an old memory.

Thanks to you, too

My book Clouds of Venus was promoted again on Tuesday.  Again, I don't know who, but I got a nice spike in downloads.

Thanks, whoever you are.  I really appreciate it.  :)

Thanks, unknown benefactor

Someone promoted Clouds of Venus today.  Don't know who.  Nice spike in free downloads, though.

Whoever's responsible, thanks.  I really appreciate it.  :)