So, it was 69 years ago today that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Some pretty tough days were ahead for the good old USA. It makes me wish we had somebody like FDR as President right about now. It’s also my father-in-law’s birthday (he’s 89 today). Yesterday, I wasn’t sure he’d be here for it. Apparently he went out at 6AM to shovel the snow (yeah, I think maybe they ought to get somebody to plow the driveway for ’em), then came back in and fell asleep in the chair, and my mother-in-law couldn’t wake him up. To make a long story short, I guess he went to the ER and had all the usual tests, and he seemed to be OK, though they kept him overnight for observation (much to his protestation, from what I hear). He should get out today, so that’s a good thing.

We got the news yesterday that SU’s punter (who was voted team captain, and is one of the best punters in the country – lots of practice, that’s for sure – won’t be playing in the Pinstripe Bowl. Turns out, he’s been having headaches, and has a brain tumor that has to be removed immediately. So, no more practice, no bowl game, and, since he’s a senior, his Syracuse career is over. They say it’s a benign tumor, though, so hopefully he’ll be OK.

Also a tough day for Elizabeth Edwards. It sounds like the clock is running out on her battle with breast cancer. It’s a shame. The older I get, the more tuned in I seem to be on all the ways your shit can get fucked up and kill you. One day you’re OK (as far as you know), and the next, bam. Brain hemorrhage, cancer, brain tumor…. When Granny was a hospice nurse, she’d come home and share tales of all sorts of ways that people die (some pretty horrible; exsanguination while all alone and trying to call 911 sounds particularly nasty – especially if you’re the person who has to clean it up). I’d just as soon go a pit more peacefully when it’s time (and find out I’ve been wrong all this time about the whole life after death thing – as long as there’s no hell or purgatory; not that I’m particularly evil, but I’m not exactly perfect, either, and if my Catholic upbringing turns out to not have been bullshit, I could go straight to hell forever on nothing but a technicality like not going to church or not confessing that I was mean to my mother or something).

In other news, it snowed all day yesterday, and it appears to have snowed all night last night, and it’s supposed to snow all day today. Tomorrow – snow, turning to snow tomorrow night. It’s cold, it’s windy, and it’s snowy. Up until Saturday, we hadn’t had as much as an inch of snow in a day since last February – 280 days in all, and the second longest such stretch (last year was a record 287 days).

Well, so much for that.

It was snowing so hard when I inched my way home last night (too dark to see with the regular headlight, and with the brights, it looked like I was on the bridge of the Enterprise traveling at about warp 8 with the stars whizzing by. At one point, it was so dark and the snow was going sideways so hard that I started to feel as if I was moving sideways – which is a pretty freaky feeling when you’re trying to make your way w/o driving in to a ditch (which you don’t wanna do, ‘cuz let me tell ya, the ditches out here are really frickin’ deep, and if you go in, you aint gettin’ back out again on your own).

Officially, as of about 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, the officially tally for Syracuse was about 14 1/2″. I have no idea how much we’ve gotten where I live. Let’s just say it’s a lot, and has to be measured in feet, rather than inches. Drifts are higher than the 4-foot fence I put up for the dogs, and I’m already running out of places to put the snow I’m plowing. And that’s all based on how things looked at 7:00 last night. I haven’t gotten out there yet this morning.

I sure picked a good year to move out to the snow belt.

Oh well, one more cuppa joe, and then it’s tractor time.