Tag: snow

Some Angels

/ dmueller

Some Angels

Began with pancakes and sausage, one game of NBA2K14, the first of two drive and walk shovelings, lazy adjustments to FYWP blog CSS, created an article review file and plunked down some impressions, sawed the Christmas tree in half for needling through the snow to curbside, vacuumed and emptied collecting chamber, prepped a lentil soup (tomorrow’s lunch) with football and hockey ambient-ambivalent in the background, shoveled again, dusted off the Element but did not drive it, gave up on snowball fight for poor snowpack, then made up a lousy game of tag on trails before the angels left wing-and-gown prints. Inside fifty pages fire and hot chocolate-side of Gaiman’s Fortunately, the Milk with Is., bummed to see Fitbit count only up to 7,595, 7,596, 7,597, and a blog entry–the first since October, first of 02014, but above all to make sure widemoth still turns over in this time of winter weather.

Snowtorso

/ dmueller

Snowtorso

Walked the main loop in our subdivision, 300-degrees of the circle, anyway, before turning west for just more than a mile and outlining the next subdivision west of here where I ran into ghastly-happy Snowtorso. Sidewalks are clear enough, but the inter-subdivision trail network isn’t maintained in the winter, so although its surface has been traveled by dozens since last week’s snowfall, the surface is all icecrags and snowruts. Unpredictable. Sometimes slippery.

I listened to last week’s “Mapping” episode of This American Life. I think it was a re-run from several years ago with a snippet about Denis Wood’s new-ish book, Everything Sings, dubbed in. Could be wrong. The segment reminded me of what I find so interesting about Wood’s work, and it convinced me that I made the right decision to devote a week to Wood and Monmonier on my winter Visual Rhetoric syllabus, which remains a work-in-progress pending a few finishing touches.

Tracing

/ dmueller

Backlight

Something about tracing a sternum against a second-story window lit by a graywhite winter’s day, the illuminated anatomical model from a book found in the garage while making space for one of the cars to fit between the stuff piled there for a garage sale scheduled sometime when the weather is warm again.

UL

/ dmueller
  • From the National Weather Service: “… WINTER STORM WATCH NOW IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY EVENING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING…

    THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NOW IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY EVENING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING.”
  • All caps, NWS shouting this warning much louder than the entire stampede of snowflakes thundering our way later this week.
  • Who writes weather advisories, anyway?
  • Youngest and oldest and I just wrapped up a Skype call. A Skype or a Skype call?
  • Oldest said his presentation today on Aristotle’s ethics was warmly received. During the call he also sent me links to three poems he’s written for a creative writing class.
  • The best advice I could give him: “You’re listening to Amiri Baraka, right?”
  • Love the line, “You see, we have a degree in degreeing and a PhD in PhDing.”
  • On the call, youngest said, “Snow storms don’t matter to me. I’ll just stay at home.”
  • I said, “For five years in Syracuse we would refer to these IMPENDING SNOW EVENTS as ‘tomorrow.'”
  • Tomorrow: winter storm watch and winter storm shovel watch, Is.’s unbirthday, evening grad class Heideggerring out of the question concerning drifting conditions, and a reset on monthly meeting metering (Jan. was 27).

Accumulations

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

What is on your mind if you live in Syracuse in mid-late February? Snow
statistics.

On average, Syracuse endures 117" of snowfall per year. If you insist
that I need a source for this, my source is Ph. He has, without flinching,
handled the largest share of shoveling this year. One hundred and seventeen
inches equals just about ten feet. If you don’t trust my source, maybe you
should do a google for the "National Weather Service" or "snowfall totals" or
"enough of this torment already."

This year we had 117" before the end of January. Ph. would probably say that
he shoveled 110" inches of it and that I struggled with the other 7" before
crying out from flesh-shredding back spasms. I, on the other hand, would offer in my
own defense that we have just one snow shovel.

Ever curious about snow statistics, I went online myself, checked out what
data the internet had to report. And I found the blog for the
New York State Golden Snowball Award,
which tracks the prestigious annual honor for the city that suffers the most
snowfall among Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, and Albany. No contest!
The site reports that No. 1 Syracuse has taken on 127.8" of snow this year,
although as I look out the window right now, I think their measure is not up to
date. Make that 127.9…128….

I can’t continue to watch. Of course, snow isn’t the only thing
accumulating on Westmoreland Ave this winter. I have
a CCCC paper to
spit-shine (it’s written-ish, if I can decide which six pages to graft
from the diss), a dis’tation to finish, a book chapter draft to collaborate, and
teach teach teaching to do.

Not to mention resuscitating EWM. Or unburying it, at the very least.

Perhaps I will have more to say about these accumulations again sometime.