One of my favorite political bloggers (John Aravosis over at AmericaBlog) loves animals so much that he now has a whole section of his website devoted to pets. Just like Kelly and me, he often talks about the latest goings-on of his own animal companion and those of his friends on the blog.
Recently, he put up a post discussing the phenomenon of cats that act like dogs. And he included a video.
This past week we have had some pretty cold days, even for Boston. Since Monday the temperature has not gotten above freezing at all. In fact, it hasn’t even climbed out of the teens for the last couple of days, and with the wind chills it has felt more like -10 degrees Fahrenheit or so, especially at night, when it has consistently dropped down into single digits. Last night it got down to 1. And tonight it will get that cold again. Meanwhile during the day the wind chill keeps things quite chilly even when the sun is out.
But we still haven’t had any significant snow this winter.
We managed to get all the way up to 54 degrees Fahrenheit or so today. But the temperature has already dropped down to 35 degrees now, and the low tonight will be all the way down to the teens. Tomorrow will be much colder, and starting tomorrow afternoon the chance of snow appears.
Tonight I was hanging out with my friend Patricio, and we went over to Micro Center to do some shopping and browsing. Man, I love that store. Anyway, the course of the conversation led to me talking about my grandparents’ farm in Somerset, and also led to me talking about the big blizzard of 1978. That event is one that everyone around here remembers quite well. My family here in Massachusetts certainly experienced it, especially my grandparents and other family members who lived in Somerset, which was in the area where it hit the hardest, down near the Rhode Island border. I think my grandparents got about 30 inches of snow in less than 36 hours.
Yeah, the temperature today got almost up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. That is just wrong. And I experienced a feeling of deja vu, which is appropriate, considering we went through exactly this sort of thing just over a year ago. It almost got up to 60, and I wore shorts that day and everything. And to make things even crazier, we might get snow tomorrow night and Wednesday.
Whee?
-Geoff
Yesterday (actually, mostly last night) we finally got some real snow here in Greater Boston. So this morning when I got up, I actually had to do some shoveling. Sadly, it was not really enough snow to make it worth the time to break out the little snow blower we own.
Well, the crazy Christmas work schedule is finally over for us, and so Kelly and I have been relaxing somewhat today. I did manage to get some pictures of the setup for Lessons and Carols.
Mark Twain had a lot of wonderful witty things to say about New England weather, and the most relevant (and true) for today would certainly be this one, from a speech he gave in 1876:
One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.
Oh, boy, is he so right. Although the cold and rain was predicted, as was the high winds, I don’t think anyone thought that we would have any appreciable snow here in Boston today, and yet we got enough to turn the roads into quite a slushy mess.
I have been reading some of the long-range forecasts for this upcoming fall and winter. Generally speaking, it seems they are predicting a pretty mild fall with temperatures above normal, and then it looks like this winter will most definitely not be like last winter.
As expected with a day that comes along only once every 4 years, my inbox has been inundated with various emails with sales, special offers and the like. Below is a selection of my favorite emails, images, and words from today.
The Books are Taking Over... 