From the back door at midday. The blizzard was in full force. There's a large red brick church just beyond the trees, but you couldn't make it out today. Toward the bottom of the picture is the top of the fence, it's 48" high, and drifted over on the rightside.
Looking through my front door. The snow even stuck to the doors and windows to make it even more dramatic.
"Firefly" is a science fiction series that made is debut and demise in 2002. My friend T. turned me on to it. I have watched the first 4 episodes. It had potential, but without the pre-requisite blockbuster audience, nothing that could have been realized.
The storm over the weekend was barely over before the snow on my roof began to slide and melt and form ice cycles. This one reached 4 solid feet by the time I took this picture of it. The photo was shot through the screen mesh of the window, which explains the cross-hatching.
Saints won decisively. Two beleaguered cities, both needing the boost. The victory is sweet...and there are no losers. Only winners get this far.
This storm did something to the wires that was very weird and interesting. It coated them like candles being dipped in wax! Here's a pic of the electric, phone and cable lines coming into my home. The diameter of the sleeve is a good 5 to 6". I've seen snow form mounds along the top of wires, but can't remember ever seeing it envelop them like this. And before the sun and wind began knocking them down, virtually every overhead line looked like it was dealing with a major case of elephantitis.
And here newly minted cicles form a batch of stalactites off the snow ridge sliding off of the back of my house.
Here's hoping that the Super Bowl will be a jam packed fun fest full of fabulous plays and daring-do decisions that will keep both the fans and players excited and guessing as to what will come about in the end! Cheers!
This view of my backyard from ground level makes me think of the forest with the snow queen from Narnia. Like a magical place where friendly satyrs and enchanted folk lurk amidst the snow laden branches. The lump in the lower left hand corner reminds me of a Beehive hair-do which my birdbath is now sporting! The rim of the bowl on the bath is 24" and the snow at ground level is almost to the top of the rim, so say 26" (unofficially).
Looking down from the second floor of my home on the backyard you can also see how the snow have covered the deck.
Here is a total from my front stoop. It comes in at 30.25". The truth lay somewhere in the middle. Though the wind wasn't ferocious, it did cause a little drifting. My neighbor found a spot that he felt was representative of his yard and plunged the yardstick to a depth of 27".
With temps that were above freezing at first, the snow that started falling at 11 AM, didn't start sticking until 1 PM and not to the roads until about 3 PM. Here at 8:30, I have about 5" and the pace is steady. Around 11 PM it's supposed to crank up to an average pace of 2" per hour, possible 3" with certain bands of heavier snow. This will continue for around 10 hours, before moderating. Then it will continue to snow throughout tomorrow for an additional 5" to 7" before ending. A grand total of 16" to 24" has been replaced by a 20" to 30" inch range. Only time will tell.
This from the people at "Love, Simply," a coalition of groups representing youth, students, and LGBT people in France. The box reads: "We who are lesbian, gay, bi, trans, straight...we are always different when we love." The campaign for tolerance was launched to coincide with St. Valentine's Day. 
After admiring the snow covered trees and full of anticipation over the cancellation of school today, I drove into D.C. and paid a visit to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. They are currently featuring an exhibition of paintings from the National Museum Wales in the U.K. The show is called "Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection". The Davies were a pair of wealthy sisters who never married and instead gave into their love of art by collecting it: a Welsh Cone Sister thing if you will (The Cone collection was amassed by two sisters similarly possessed and his house at the Baltimore Museum of Art).
It was painted very near to the artist's suicide. It's title is simply "Rain Auvers." It is not his last painting, but it references that work with both it's inclusion of the wheat fields and more specifically the black birds. The moment I saw them, I knew it was from that final early summer when Vincent was newly freed from the asylum, painting manically, and moving inextricably toward his self-inflicted demise. Had I not even held my knowledge of the artist so that these associations were evoked like the very air around me, I do believe I would have still understood the growing melancholy that was rising in Van Gogh's heart like the crow crossing the hedgerow in the rain.
Brought to you by the good people at Proctor & Gamble, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, in conjunction with Conoco/Exxon/Mobil/Dutch Royal Shell group who's parent company PepsiCO would like to acknowledge the clandestine affiliation with McDonald's international under the auspices of Coca Cola and United Health Care/Humana/Blue Cross-Blue Shield, industrial puppet of Pfizer/GlaxoSmithKline/Roche/Novartis/AstraZeneca/Merck/Eli Lily Inc. America, it's a new beginning.
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin, 1903 - 1977
You can buy this album from itunes or on Amazon. com and in doing so, you give to the relief of the suffering of the people of Haiti. The music is at times haunting, at times uplifting, throughout amazing. Come on people, let's just do this.
I can't remember when I started watching Law & Order. And if you watch TV at all, you're likely to run into some aspect of the show somewhere. But I love it. It's a great concept and the cast and stories have been consistently compelling for nearly 20 seasons. 
I have a new love! Paldo is a Korean company and this drink made with aloe vera and pome- granate. Low carb. Full of little chunks of aloe. It's delicious!
On January 12th the world was held captive to the tragedy of the 7.0 earth- quake in Haiti. It was a major shift of a minor fault line in an impoverished nation. Tens--if not hundreds--of thousands of people died and suffered life altering injuries. But this is not the entire story.
Kate McGarrigle, half of a popular sibling folk duo in the 1970s and mother of musicians Rufus and Martha Wainwright, died of cancer Monday. She was 63.
You have a new Senator -- and God knows he's a better naked centerfold than Barbara Mikulski any day of the week (hell, millennium!) I hope that everyone who voted for this bimbo gets exactly what you deserve.
Even though it was supposed to be off exhibit on January 10th, this beautiful Triptych was still available to be viewed by the public in the grand rotunda. It's on loan from the National Museum of Abruzzo, Italy. Known as the Beffi Tritych, it's exhibition came after the 5.3 earthquake in L'Aquila back in April. The work suffered a few minor scratches which were conserved at the NGA, and in appreciation the Abruzzo museum allowed us to appreciate it for the first time in history. It's a gorgeous work of devotion and art.
Picked this up yesterday, it's Tracy Chevalier's latest novel (think, "The Girl With The Pearl Earring"). It's the story of the friendship between Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. Mary was the source of the children's rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" in the early 1800's one of the most prolific discoverers of fossils in the world. She is (along with her brother Joe) responsible for finding the first Ichthyosaurus, and Plesiosaurus off of the beach of their native Lyme Regis in the south of England. Little is know of her in actuality. It is know that she was friends with Elizabeth. Tracy takes that fact, the pursuit of fossil's and the era and weaves a compelling and marvelous story. I've only read the first three chapters, but can't hardly put it down.
GROSS: My guest is Patti Smith. Her new memoir "Just Kids" is about how she became a poet, songwriter and performer. It's also about her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who became her soul mate when she moved to New York in 1967. He died of AIDS in 1989.
Ms. SMITH: Yes. I mean, I think that, you know, there - the idea that time heals all wounds is not really true. Our wounds aren't really ever healed. We just learn to walk with them. We learn that some days we're going to feel intense pain all over again and we just have to say, okay, I know you. If - you can come along with me today, in the same way that sometimes we start laughing out in the middle of nowhere remembering something that happened with someone we've lost.
At one point in the morning I trotted over to the Hirschhorn Museum. Haven't been there in a long time. And it's frankly a lousy time to visit there. Much of their gallery space is closed for renovation or transition of exhibitions. The only way to access the lobby from the first floor was to take the elevator. With their escalators such a prominent architectural feature, who even knew that they had an elevator? And for the record, it would take more saliva to cover the average postage stamp from 1990 than the floor surface of the Hirschhorn's public elevator.
My 1st semi-annual check-up done on MLK Jr. day, I left my doctor's office and drove on up into Georgetown. On a quiet holiday morning with a warm sun like today, it was the perfect place to go strolling and treat myself to a wonderful brunch at one of the most wonderful little restaurants in the world. Cafe La Ruche is a quaint and cozy French restaurant with all of the charm of a Parisienne sidewalk cafe. I first dined there in 1994, and I confess I do not dine there nearly as often as I should. Today I had the most divine Eggs Benedict with Spinach (instead of ham). The golden cream of the poached eggs melted into the hollandaise sauce with every yummy bite. It came with a side of roasted potatoes, and I used the little spuds to capture as much of the yokes and hollandaise as I could slather upon them.
Visiting D.C.? You won't be disappointed by a meal at La Ruche! Also check out their website. It includes sample menu items, monthly recipes, and music selections from bands who occasionally perform there.
