Let it snow...oh wait...

OK, so we're getting more of the white stuff, a lot more, more than even December (?!?). So, I'm hunkered down, even did the laundry (which I was planning to do anyway), to avoid possible problems of doing laundry with the vent covered with 12+ inches of white fluff (such as carbon monoxide fumes backing into the house).

Now's the time to sit back and do the charging--cell phones, rechargeable batteries (for radios and cameras), so as not to worry. With all that in the works, I'll sit back and enjoy more scenes like these:

You know the deal if you have to drive in this type of weather--go slow. That lesson was reinforced last week, when I had to drive up Pennsylvania Avenue last Saturday, while the snowy stuff was still coming down hard. Scariest thing is while the stuff is falling, as the plowing, salting, and sanding does little good until after it has stopped. So, when even busy streets like Southern Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue are basically snow- and ice-covered thoroughfares (like I'm sure they will be again today), taking it slow allows you to get where you need to be. I wasn't quite doing 25 mph last Saturday, so I avoided skidding, but could tell that if I went any faster, the car could have slid, as I felt very slight attempts at the car skidding a couple of times, after which I slowed down some more, which stopped that action.

* * *

Thankfully, my 'rolla is not one of the newest ones, such it's exempt from the Toyota recall fiasco, which now also involves the Prius. The recall makes me think back to buying the car from the dealer, as the salesman tried what I thought was a novel approach to getting me to purchase the extended warranty; his spiel was that with all the innards being computerized, you wouldn't want to have to pay for the mechanic merely to find out what might be wrong. I bit, and got the extended warranty, and am glad I did. However, that admission on the part of the salesperson is one reason I'm glad I got the manual windows for that car, which I'm not even sure is an option anymore.

Yes, I like my electronics as much as the next person, but I don't like everything to be computerized, with no manual backup.

Still standing...but what a week!

Whew! A good but tiring week, in more ways than one. First the snow, then the shoveling, etc. The last snow of the season turned out to be the real one, and just around the corner comes daylight savings time this weekend (springing forward and all). With a loss of sleep to boot! No more days like this to tempt you to sleep just a bit later...

I imagine it's been a busy, tiring week for Obama as well. The various proposed provisions of Obama's economic agenda--the stimulus package, its funding, the healthcare summit--amidst British PM Gordon Brown's visit, and fending off potshots from Senator McCain, who scorned efforts to fund research as pork (umm, didn't that backfire during one of the debates, when he scoffed at funding for a planetarium?) and wealthy people who claim to be fearful of his tax increases for them, even going so far as to deliberately decrease their income.

Times like these probably make O wonder whether he bit off more than he could chew, or climb over...