The time I planned to spend working on a Java application to ping Salon’s Weblog server was gone before I had a chance to do anything.
Along with this weekend’s blizzard, we had about an hour’s thunder and lightning starting around 5:30 this morning. Olive‘s not a big fan of large-scale meteorological disturbances, so first, I had to take her outside to prove that the thunder and lightning was out there as well, and then, once she was convinced that there was no escaping it, we had to sit up with her until it had passed. After we got back to sleep, we didn’t wake up again until it was almost time to take her for her midday walk, so we all bundled up and went to have a look at this blizzard. It turns out that the hysterical weather reporters had, if anything, understated the storm.
Having processed and posted the pictures I took, there were then all of the family phone calls about my brother’s wedding this past week. He got married in southern California on Thursday morning, and I found out about it in an e-mail from my mother on Friday evening complaining that there was no one for her to talk to about it. It wasn’t a complete surprise that he got married (his girlfriend–now wife–is, after all, almost seven months pregnant), and given the logistics, I knew that they were planning to do something quiet out there before the baby was born and then have a more formal wedding later, but I did expect to hear about it beforehand, or at least on the same day. It turns out that it was just a matter of some confusion and miscommunication. A few phone calls later, everything is happily resolved, but now the day is pretty much gone.
morgannels 
Looking out on yet another flawless, summer-like day I feel a pang of compassion for my comrades struggling in the Northeast. Our winter has been unusually sunny and mild, apparently, due to “La Nina,” the opposite of “El Nino.” It has something to do with the Pacific currents cooling where they’re supposed to warm.
We grew up in a household that generally included a Siberian Husky. I vividly remember one dog with her tail between her legs, slinking from room to room during a thunderstorm. As a grown dog during these occasions, she’d curl herself in a tight ball between the toilet and the bath tub, longing for comfort.
Congratulations to the newlyweds.
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I can’t speak for other denizens of the Northeast, but I’m certainly not suffering. Up until a couple of days ago, we’d been having a pretty weak imitation of a winter here. I think I’d worn my winter jacket less than a half dozen times. I’ve missed the cold and snow, and I was happy to have it for a couple of days. But starting tomorrow, it’s going to warm back up, and I don’t think the 27 or so inches of snow will even make it to the weekend, at least not in Manhattan.
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Yeah, i heard the manhattanites actually got “Thundersnow” which is pretty darn cool. I heard it was especially loud, too…Poor Olive. And many congrats to your brother but I do wish you’d known about the wedding beforehand. Kind of leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. I hope you at least saw pictures.
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The thundersnow was pretty awesome. Laying half asleep in bed at 7am I saw a flash then heard a rumble. I figured it was a snow plow (flash from siren, rumble from plow hitting the road). Ten minutes later it happened again and I realized it was lightning/thunder. It was a pretty amazing thing to witness.
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