After a long, long week, it’s finally (and suddenly) Friday. One of the great enigmas in life is how each day (non weekend day, anyway) can be so unbearably long, yet the days, weeks, months, and years fly by in what seems like an instant (once they’re over). Must be something to do with the extreme time compression that occurs whenever I leave the stasis field known as “work.” If I’m ever exposed to some fast-acting, flesh-eating virus or something, all I’ll need to do is go to my office and sit at my desk while they work on a cure. That’s why so many people croak right after they retire; as soon as you leave the work time bubble you experience massive temporal acceleration and begin aging at a 67% faster rate (retired teachers are exempt from this particular phenomenon).

I keep getting these e-mails from Democrats.com with the subject of “Clarence Thomas is not above the law.” Uh, yeah he is. Have you not been paying attention the past 20 or whatever years? Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Scalia, Bybee, Yoo – all these people are above the law, and Thomas is least of them (in more ways than one). He’s just your basic token pizza delivery dude, but he still gets to be above the law. It’s his reward for playing along.

Did you know there’s an international agreement on how to compute “average” snowfall? Of course not – why would you? Turns out there is, though, and the agreement is to use 30 years of data from the three most recent previously completed decades. And don’t start arguing about what constitutes a “decade” either.

Anyhow, turns out that means the “average” snowfall for Syracuse just got revised up. From 1971-2000 (yeah, I agree, it should be 1970-1999 for reasons I’ve mentioned before, but we agreed not to argue), the average was 121.1″, but now we’re going with the 1981-2010 number: 123.8″. Suck on that, Buffalo, with your paltry 94.7″ (down from 97″). In fact, none of the other NYS Golden Snowball competitors even crack 100″ (Rochester comes in a distant 2nd at 99.5″). Of course, out here in the boonies where I live, you can probably tack on another couple of feet, at least.

Who cares? Well, nobody, really. But when you’re facing six months of dark, cold winter, you either embrace it or go nuts. Or – my personal preference – both. And winter is actually beautiful when you get a chance to get out there and enjoy it. It’s the struggling to get back and forth to work that gets tedious.

Syracuse Beer Week starts this weekend. There are some 100 events scheduled, and I’ll be attending none of them (though I’m looking forward to a private celebration when I get home from work tonight). I just don’t understand how one can enjoy beer when one has to drive back home. There are those who can have a beer or two and be satisfied, I guess, but I’ve never been one of them.

Last week, I thought I saw that one of Bill Maher’s guests this week will be Darrell Issa. I hope he cancelled or something, because otherwise it’ll be tough to watch. As you know, I’m not one to be disparaging (if you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all is my motto), and I’m not one to talk, but, to put it politely, I find Issa to be a disingenuous, lying (is that redundant?) piece of shit. I’d say he lies through his teeth, but I think that’s a set of fake choppers he’s got in there. God know that looks like Kiwi® Parade Gloss Black he rubs on his head.

This may be one of those shows I have to “watch” from the other room to avoid damaging the teevee.

I also have some sort of family obligation this weekend. I’d mostly prefer to hang out and get stuff done around the house (or put in some seat time on the tractor), but that’s what family is all about, I guess. Doing things you don’t really want to, be feel you must.

Speaking of which, one more day to get through.