Winter Solstice

This concept has become all-consuming to those of us in the Northwest. Everything in our lives for the last week has depended on the weather and whether or not we were able to navigate through it. Snow (at least a foot and a half), sleet/freezing rain (a 1/2 inch thick sheet of ice right in the middle) and wind gusts up to 66 miles per hour yesterday. Sound like fun?

Mike's training to be an east coast guy, shoveling off our 11 steps, the swing and our front porch. But even with all the hassle, it is so beautiful. He just turned on our Christmas lights and they reflect so prettily off the pristine snow. The fact that none of our Christmas decorations blew down during that horrible windstorm is a tribute to his set up abilities. The best word I can come up with for this weather is bizarre.

Then you try to plan by listening to the tv weathermen and each of them says something different so that's no good. As of now, my office will open at 9:00 tomorrow but we'll see if that's still true tomorrow morning. This is the worst I've seen it in a long time.

You know when I think of the word "solstice", I think of a calm, peaceful, serene changing of the seasonal guard. I don't know why, the term just brings those words to mind. The actual definition of it is, "The winter solstice occurs at the instant when the Sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observers hemisphere." The dictionary says, "Solstice is the term applied to either of the two points at which the Sun is farthest from the celestial equator." Both pretty much the same definitions and they put the lie to my impression of the word because it's actually much more scientific than I gave it credit for being. So much for my artistic perception.

Well, I just realized they redid "Yours, Mine and Ours". When did that happen? I'm afraid Rene Russo and Dennis Quaid simply are not Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. Nevertheless, I'm going to give it a try. I'll report back on my thumbs up or down. I'm tired of watching the snow.

A demain.