Oh, Canada

The Dukes played in the Pacific Coast League, which, at the time, also featured teams from Edmonton and Calgary (and maybe Vancouver? says Wikipedia). As regular attenders of Duke's games in the late 1980s and 1990s, we regularly got to hear "Oh Canada" along with the US national anthem. To this day, I kind of enjoy busting it out, as it is both nostalgic and eminently more singable than our anthem.

I was hoping to catch the men's hockey final, but I promised Joe I would do the grocery shopping as he was overwhelmed with other stuff, like getting a birthday present for moi and cleaning the awful bathroom and writing a grant. I decided to go to Trader Joe's, which was a huge mistake, partly because it was so insane like everything around here, but also because they had neither appropriate linguine nor basil, making tonight's pesto dinner kind of impossible. So I also had to go to the supermarket. And I had gone to CVS beforehand to get toothpaste, because I thought that plus TJ's would be enough stops. But I could have gotten all the stuff I got there at the supermarket.

Everything is way too difficult around here. There are too many people for not enough good things.

Christmas

You know, I have heard it said that in New Mexico, if you want both red and green chile on your food, you can say "Christmas," but I'm pretty sure everyone I knew growing up would just say "both."

It has also come to my attention that people might not know you can order jarred goodness from El Pinto's website. Recently I procured the medium mix box which has red chile sauce, green chile, green chile sauce, salsa, chipotle salsa, and taco salsa. All delicious. The gringos can get most of these in mild, the brave in hot. I had never had the red chile before -- it's really good. Put it on eggs or pork or a spoon!

I'm feeling a ton better today, and since I feel so much better relative to yesterday, I FEEL GREAT! even though I probably feel worse than your average day. It's all relative. Like all the weather folks around here talking about the balmy weekend we'll have in the low 40s, even though the average this time of year is closer to 50. It's just been a lot colder out this week. Like Christmas!

Sick at home

The commute home Tuesday was hellish, leaving me standing out in the cold in Silver Spring for about 45 minutes just to get the last mile home. Yesterday and today I've been sleeping and vegging -- I wish I had this cold last week while I was already home, because I could really stand to get some work done. Joe is bringing me soup tonight. I hope I can get in tomorrow.

Discipline

I feel a cold abrewin', and my head is pretty foggy. But unlike in the past, I have gotten quite a lot done today. Both the physiological and behavioral changes I've made have given me a lot more discipline and focus to stick to the task at hand, even if I feel a little slow.

I'm now trying to apply discipline elsewhere, like to food consumption and energy expenditure. And flossing.

OPM FAIL: Commuter hell

I don't ride Metrorail, but by all accounts, it was not really ready to take hundreds of thousands of Feds and others who follow OPM snow rulings to work this morning. I got to my bus stop (sidewalks in Downtown Silver Spring were pretty good), and the J3 pulled up, which was surprising since they were only supposed to be running J2. NextBus said the J1 (much faster route to work) was coming in 8 minutes, so I decided not to take the J3.

NextBus then proceeded to show the wackiest series of arrival times for the next 40 minutes or so. 8 minutes, then 6, back to 8, 7, 6, 8, 6, 9, 7, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... and then the bus (which approaches as a Z9 at the end of its run) zipped on by. Despair. But it came back around 5 minutes later. I could have ridden the long bus and gotten in around the same time (and been warmer). The bus was pretty jammed the whole way to work. Where nothing was really shoveled. The base almost never gets around to shoveling the outside sidewalk for days (good neighbors). There was a path shoveled, except there was a huge mound of snow right in the middle. Mostly I had to walk in the road. If the base can't get its act together and clear the sidewalks they should close or at least email everyone so we can opt to work from home.

After all that, I needed second breakfast, a blueberry muffin and more coffee.

It's not easy to focus this morning, but I'm sure I'll get in the swing of things. Usually we get 59 minutes off at the end of the day before a 3-day weekend, but I have a feeling that is not going to happen today. The only reason I came in was for a seminar on the new NIH grant format given by our esteemed VP for research -- it hasn't been cancelled, which is a good thing.

I wish I could be somewhere warm.

Away from work

What have I done for four days since I haven't been to work? I did do a little work, but only very little. Monday I caught up on TV (LOST!), Tuesday I cleaned, yesterday I talked on the phone to my dad and a colleague and watched LOST, and today I went grocery shopping and helped with shoveling a little. I poked around the internet for as long as I wanted. It doesn't seem like very much.

It seems like kind of a waste. I'd like to be on a beach somewhere. Hell, at this point, I'd like to sit in a restaurant somewhere. Grocery shopping didn't really cure the cabin fever.

A whole lotta snow

These are from inside this morning... with 8 hours to go on the snowstorm.

The power didn't go out all night, but right when we got up it went off for several minutes. Pepco is reporting 89K+ customers without power, and over in the Potomac zip codes there are more people without power than with it right now.




I'm concerned about the way that tree is hugging our car.

Even though it's still snowing, I'm going to head out after coffee and shovel, shovel, shovel. And try to get the snow off that tree.

Snowy snow, more than the other snows

Things in the DC area have been pretty crazy this year.

The weekend before Christmas it snowed around 16-18 inches, which was a lot. The feds shut down on the Monday, and I worked from home the Tuesday and Wednesday because I knew the sidewalks would be terrible (they were -- one friend broke his leg and a coworker broke her wrist trying to get around). Then we went off for the holiday.

Last Saturday it snowed a big fluffy icy snow that you could just push with the shovel, and Tuesday night a warmer wetter snow that melted quickly off the roads and sidewalks. But this weekend, we're in for a predicted 16-26 inches of heavy wet snow.

It hasn't arrived just yet, but we're all waiting at home or on the way home.

I have a half day today, which I'm spending at home. I haven't started it quite yet, but I have two things to do: look over a grant application for a doctoral student and submit my dissertation paper to a big name journal in my field, who I hope will not kick it back to me immediately. Although that's better than the journals that hang onto it for months before saying no.

Life has been a lot better since I had my thyroid problem identified and fixed. Days I used to spend trying to read, trying to poke at writing that needed to get done, trying to edit, I now spend pushing different projects forward. I didn't used to be able to turn to a task and spend half and hour or an hour making progress. It would take half an hour to even figure out what I was doing, and by then I was too tired to do it. You never really understand just how bad you were feeling until you feel better, and the contrast is complete.

Today I'll do those two things, and maybe by then there will be snow to shovel. Joe wants a snowblower, for his collection of outdoor toys, but I like to shovel snow, to clear the path.