So it goes

Yes, Vonnegut died. I felt very sad when I heard the news. He certainly was one of my heroes. I read his stuff when I was young and impressionable. I thought Billy Pilgrim was a great character, right there with Heller's Yosarian from Catch-22. The meaning of life. I can remember reading The Sirens of Titan while lying on the bed in Dockside Cabin at camp. It wasn't called Dockside Cabin yet, it was still called by the name of the aunt & uncle whose cabin it had previously been. When I got to the end of the book I thought it was like magic: how cool would a person be to think of that! I still think it's a great book, but when I read it again recently it was disappointing. I think you have to be young, it has to be the '70s and you have to be naive for it to be magical.

Big storm--really, really big storm forecast for yesterday. Guess what? Didn't happen. We were supposed to get 7-12" (me in the "higher elevations") but we ended up with, maybe 4". Oh how I love meteorologists who don't know shit from shinola. Right now there's more snow in the Champlain Valley than at my house. Take a good long look at that sentence because you may never see it again.

The ice on the lake may never go out. Ken & I talked about ice out the other night. I think the latest I've seen the ice go out was May 2nd. We may hit at least that date this year. My date is April 18 (which I couldn't remember the significance of until, sadly, I remembered it was Jamie's birthday. So then I remembered it was also the birth date of my first dog). I used to pick Henry's birthday, the 25th, but stoopidly not this year. ANYWAY, the lake is now covered with snow, which will insulate the ice and delay iceout. The rivers are clear, though, and if the sun ever shines again I will see sparkling diamonds on the Saranac River in Cadyville on my way home.

There were these funny tufts of snow on tree branches on my way to work this morning. They looked just like cotton balls stuck in the tops of trees, very pretty but odd. I took a picture but haven't figured out how to post pictures to Flickr directly, or even to this computer without loading them on the computer (must leave computer sterile, remember) so picture will have to wait. It amazes me just how little I really know about computers, when I think back to the years I spent teaching everyone DOS and how to use a mouse, and the zillion times I took IBM PS2s apart to add boards for external 5 1/2 inch drives or external CD-ROM drives. I am SOOOOO old!