Yikes It’s Cold!

Sometimes this blog is written to be read immediately. At other times, right now for example, I’m writing to document something, so I don’t forget. Like today’s weather.

Holy cow, it was cold.

There’s a strange weather record – lowest high temperature, which was broken today. On the Connecticut shoreline, it was more smashed than broken! The old record fell by a full ten degrees.

In the midst of all this, Helaine said to me, “There’s a Comcast truck outside.” So there was.

We’d had some minor trouble with the cable. A few channels, most of which we don’t watch, weren’t available. I didn’t cry, without AZN or Oxygen, but I did want National Geographic.

I opened the front door and saw it was actually two trucks beside our telephone pole. One was a bucket truck. They were working on the pole… in the wind… in the bitter cold.

“You guys want me to make some coffee,” I asked. They said no.

Pangs of guilt overtook me. Was National Geographic worth wind chills of twenty below (really – no hyperbole necessary)?

As they continued their work, they came in the house (and fixed the problem). We talked and they said the weather wasn’t so awful, because they were dressed for it. I wasn’t convinced.

As I type this, the worst of the wind chill is gone… but it’s still 9&#176!

Hearing about the weather, a friend from California called to tell me he was sitting by his pool, enjoying the day. Grrrrr.

A few days ago I wrote how I sensed spring was just around the corner. Maybe it still is, but right now that corner looks a long way off.

Plus, the groundhog won’t return my calls!


Our Own Personal Witch

Helaine asked me to use my (limited) technical prowess to mount a witch on the telephone pole in front of our house (why the utilities aren’t below ground in this fairly recent development, when the houses went in at the same time as the street, is beyond me).

Halloween has become an semi-obsession with the girls of this house, and is tolerated by this curmudgeon. They put up ghosts and gravestones and spiderwebs and this year, a witch.

The idea of a witch, mounted where she crashed through a telephone pole, is only a few years old, but the kit Helaine bought is so well thought out and mature a product that I assume this year, or next, it will pass from cute to overkill. That will put it in the same category as the lit, head bobbing, reindeer and Christmas light icicles hanging from your rain gutter.