It was a veritable Winter Wonderland today. Yesterday afternoon at about 4 pm, a snow/ice storm blew into the Portland area. It was pretty cool. I went and did a little Christmas shopping at the mall. What a postcard-like activity to do-- shop for Christmas while it's snowing! Since the weather was so bad, any planned Sunday evening activity was canceled, so I wrapped presents (wrapping presents, for me, consists of putting the gift in decorative sacks and artfully placing pieces of tissue paper over the items-- I don't do real wrapping anymore. Sorry; I just don't.) while I watched the TV "Breaking News" drama ("There's actually snow falling. And there are actually traffic problems."”) unfold before me. There'’s only so much of that high drama I can stand before I have to turn it off, which I did, in order to luxuriate my ears with Christmas music while I sipped my nog (among other Holiday Beverages) while I lovingly placed the tissue papers, making sure they poofed out the top of the sacks, oh-so tastefully. Shall we start a new paragraph now?

Let's. So today, the roads were basically passable, although it was nice that pretty much everything decided to cancel itself for the day, so traffic was light. The pix attached to this blog was taken this afternoon, highlighting the freezing rain aspect of the Weather Event. [Editor's Note: The attached pix isn't. Because for some unknown reason, it wasn't transmitted by my cell phone to the Nine Forward Central Computers (NFCC) for processing. Our regrets. Just imagine a pix of a tree with about a quarter-inch of ice on every branch and twig, and you'll get the idea.]

One thing nice about having ample amounts of laptops lying around the townhouse is that they run even while the lights don't, as is the case as I compile this post. As I carefully, yet easily, pulled my vehicle into my garage this evening (after a long and arduous day of providing package deliverance to the masses) and turned it off (the car), the lights in the neighborhood all went off. They'’re still off now, a full one-and-a-half hours later. I must say I was pleased that my backup emergency lights (that I have placed in strategic locations around Nine Forward) worked very well, giving me ample time to light a number of candles which are now providing the sole source of light, save the blue glow of the screen on which this memo is being meticulously crafted for your reading pleasure.

I don't know; maybe it's the lights being out that tends to bring out this literary weirdness in me. I'd love to think that's the case, but I have my doubts.