The snow came Christmas night, giving us the first White Christmas (maybe not Christmas morning, but we'll take it) in six decades.
By tomorrow, it will probably be all but gone. Such is the ephemeral nature of snow in the North Carolina piedmont. But, hey, we'll take it, because snow is fucking awesome and puts me in a good mood whenever it arrives.
Plus, I was able to make a new friend, Albert, the Dapper English Snow Gentleman.
As you may have picked up on here over the past...how long has it been? Four? Yeah, let's go with four years, is that I love to make fun of how inept weather forecasters are. A lot of my vitriol is directed toward the boobs on the Weather Channel--Jeff Morrow, I'm looking at you. Not really. You have a huge head and it angers me. But the rest of you are on my list.
But not you, Maria LaRosa. I couldn't be angry with you even if you ate live kittens on national television...which might actually be good theater. Admit it. You'd tune in just to see how that went.
Anyway, I was watching the local forecast on Friday to get an idea about how the weekend would shape up since I was planning on doing some outdoorsy type work and putting up Christmas lights. That's when I heard the local forecast say there was a slight chance for some flurries or some light snow on Saturday night during the overnight, but any accumulations would be confined to the areas near the Virginia border.
Oh cool, I thought, A little bit of snow would set a lovely background for the holiday season.
I even told my wife. "They're calling for some flurries on Saturday night. Just to let you know." She had to work, so I thought I would warn her. We both then laughed, because, if they call for snow, it's more likely that it'll be 90 degrees and sunny. Even at night.
Saturday arrived and I took my son with me and we went and got our hair cut, we did some Christmas shopping for my wife, and then we grabbed some lunch--McDonalds, the Lunch of Champions! Well, he's a champ. I'm a tubby white guy hurtling toward middle-age.
On the way home, I noticed some shit flying by the window. "Hey, buddy!" I said, "I think that's snow!"
"It is! It is snow!" he said in his gleeful, charged-up on McDonalds six-year-old voice! "Oh, it's going to be awesome!"
See, told you he's a champ.
I didn't want to crush his little heart, though, by telling him that the few flurries we saw sail past the windshield would probably be it for the snow. It stopped after a few seconds, and he wondered where the snow went. I explained it to him that there's probably some bands of snow moving through the clouds, and he understood.
We made it home with only a few more flurries and got inside. I started up another load of laundry, and saw a few more intermittent flakes float past the window, so I ran into the living room to open the blinds so that the kids could see it. I returned to my domestic chores and looked up to see actual snow falling from the sky. No more of this flurry shit. This was actual snow.
I went back into the living room and pointed it out to the kids. They were enthused and watched it for a few seconds and then I went to make my daughter some lunch (she's a champ, too, but I didn't bring her any lunch because it would have been cold and everyone knows that cold McDonalds only tastes good when you're hungover and ALREADY filled with remorse). The kids were talking about playing in the snow and my heart sank because, well, we weren't getting any kind of measurable snowfall out of this. The weather men had forecasted a few flurries, and, to be honest, I was surprised it snowed at all.
Imagine my further surprise when I dished up a bowl of soup for my daughter and saw that the backyard was white-ish already.
Holy Shit! I thought, This could be for real!
And, it was. We ended up with about two inches of snow on the ground, which the kids got to play in and enjoy. I do feel kind of sad, however, because if I wasn't there for them to pelt with snowballs, I don't think they'd get any enjoyment out of life.
The truly funny thing about the snow shower event was that the local hacks were still on the television, saying that there might be a slight chance of snow, but there shouldn't be any accumulation. The National Weather Service then popped up with a Winter Weather Advisory (because if there's anything that frightens Southerners more than diversity, it's snow), and yet the locals were saying that accumulations would only be significant in the counties bordering Virginia.
Morons.
*sigh* It was fun, however. I had forgotten how great it is to look out the window in the gloaming of nightfall during a solid snow event, when the edges of everything sort of blur into the background and the flakes drift through the picture. It's quite lovely.
Not as lovely as Maria LaRosa wearing a pair of fuck-me boots, but lovely nonetheless.
For many people in the South, the thing they fear more than education and literacy is black ice. In case you're unaware, black ice is that phenomenon that occurs when you've had some melting of ice and snow on the roadways, but then the water refreezes. It's usually not a very thick layer of ice that refreezes, so it looks black on the surface of the road.
But really, we know that it's "Black Ice", because it's a killer.
It raises up from the surface of the road, axe in one hand, log chain in the other, and either cleaves you into kibble or smashes you into meat paste. Afterward, it hurtles your car into the nearest pine grove. Then, it's bloodlust sated for a few moments, it eases itself back down to the tarmac where it quietly awaits its next hapless victim.
So, for that reason, I'm home today. The kids have a day off school, and my wife had to go to work. But, it's not like I was too torn up over it. I think the conversation went like this:
Wife: The school call--
Me: Oh, I guess I'll have to take a day off work. Oh no!!!!
And then I went dancing running from the room giggling wailing and beating my breast and other things that you're supposed to do when you're so overcome with emotion that you have to express it through actions.
So, here I sit at home, pondering how I'm going to find enough energy to shower, wondering if I have clean unders upstairs, and wondering if it's a social faux pas for one to take a nap if one has slept in until 10:30.
I am hoping, however, that with this weekend's forecast of another round of snow and sleet and winter weather, that we won't have to deal with Jim Cantore anywhere in the Carolinas. The man actually reported that Charlotte was experiencing "Sneezle": that's snow, sleet and freezing drizzle.
Fuck you, Jim Cantore.
He then went on to explain the "dire situation" in the state where 45,000 customers reported power outages. "That's doubled in just the past hour". And...then it never went back up. And power was restored pretty quickly.
Hey, look at that...bitching about the Weather Channel two weeks in a row on Monday...what are the odds? Is that a faux pas, too? Or is that just an internet meme?
I know one thing that's definitely not a faux pas, and that is to hope that the forecasted sleet and freezing rain for tomorrow morning comes just in time to re-ice the roads. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go wail and beat my breast and plan on where my early afternoon nap is going to take place.
In case you hadn't heard, the Apocalypse big snow storm hit yesterday evening and into the day today. And by "into the day today" I mean, "there was a bit of snow during the morning and some sleet up until 11:00, and after that it was pretty much a major fucking disappointment and nothing like what the weather forecasters were calling for at all." Which is a very long way of saying "they were wrong, again".
However, unlike in times past when the weather forecasters would call for six to ten inches of snow and we'd get "a dusting", we did pick up a goodly amount. Nothing like the 10 - 15 inches that they were calling for in the "northern sections of the viewing area", but it was respectable.
We got eight inches around here. So, the greater northern Durham area of North Carolina now knows what it's like to be my wife: a good eight inches and then coated in white.
...
...
...
Maybe I need to borrow Steamy's Awkward Cricket.
Anyway, the wife and I took the kids outside to play in the snow--twice!!! We managed to finally get enough snow, and a decent place to do it, to where we could go sledding. And by "sledding", I mean "using a Tupperware storage bin lid for purposes it was never engineered or intended for". Feel the awesome wrath of my body flopping on top of you, Tupperware lid!!!
Enough of that. The only reason I'm writing this is to make fun of the local forecasters (again, and as usual), and to post this picture:
That ought to teach you to not read blogs on the weekends.
Friday afternoon could have been one of the happiest of my recent life, ranking right up there with my marriage to the Comely and Buxom Boudicca, the births of my children, and the firing of Bob Davie George O'Leary Tyrone Willingham Charlie Weis. You see, it snowed.
More importantly, I got the afternoon off. Working in the South is great!
More important than that was that my director took us out for lunch right before being let off early for work. And nothing goes with Christmas and the firing of a subpar football coaches snow like Cajun food. Yep, Cajun food, snow, and farts that make your asshole feel like it's on fire. One heaping helping of Christmas Spirit for me!
I got home Friday afternoon. By the time I got home, there was a whole zero inches of snow on the ground and there was no precipitation falling at all. Feeling guilty about getting out of work early, I decided to head out and mail off my packages for Christmas. Otherwise, my parents might not have their cheap bottles of wine books and my nieces would be missing out on their Bible Charades game. Talk about shattering Christmas dreams!
So, I braved the Winter Storm that Wasn't with packages to mail, visions of snow bunnies and stranded traveling college coeds dancing in my head. I also had to get a few last second items for my kids and some Coke Zero for my wife, lest she drink all of my drinks and then we'd be fist fighting...again...and that's just not good for the Holiday Spirit. Plus, it wouldn't be a fair fight at all, what with me wielding that chemical warfare out of my rectum and whatnot.
As I was wrapping up my holiday shopping and package shipping and picking up dinner, the snow finally started coming down. I walked into Wendys to get some bacon-encrusted burgers for me and the fam healthy salads and the snow was coming down, the streets were wet but not slick, but the grassy areas were snowed over. I came out of Wendys a little bit later and the parking lot and my car were both covered in snow. Awesome.
I realize that my measly one inch of snow doesn't stack up with what a lot of you got this past weekend. So, spare me your sob stories of how you got a foot of snow. I thought everyone wanted 12 inches +. I had enough snow on the ground to be able to take my kids outside and play in it Saturday morning. My daughter was even able to make a couple of snow men Lilliputians. The snow wasn't exactly the best for packing (what with that layer of ice over the top of it), but it was good enough for making snow men Lilliputians. And my daughter took the lid off one of the bins that holds their outside toys and used it as a snowboard...more or less.
But, perhaps the greatest Christmas Miracle of all? My children set aside their petty squabbles and their sibling rivalry in a way that can on be described as "heartwarming". And that would be your hearts, because mine was filled with bitterness and anger (and Cajun spices). You see, they set aside their sibling rivalry so that they could work together to pummel me with snowballs. They even found a way to work in a nutshot or two. Nothing says Christmas like writhing around in the snow with a pulsing, throbbing pain in your groin. Am I right, folks?
And I should have seen it coming, too. My son actually wrote out a list of things to do in the snow. It was as follows:
