Night Owl Cards

 I know I've written about the weather a lot the last week or two. It's January. Weather is about the only thing going on this month. It's generally cold in almost the whole country right now from what I gather, but, per usual, we're off the charts here. The lake-effect snow dump isn't as bad as it was in Christmas 2022, but we're in one of those "when's it going to end" stretches. It certainly doesn't help when the weather forecast tells us the lake effect will be gone once Thursday's here and then magically changes to "expect 3-5 more inches (more like 7-8)" with not a word about the previous forecast. That's we're I am right now as I write this. Yeah, yeah, I know, just get to the cards (spoiler: there are only two), but you can scroll, right? Here's a look at how much the weather has dominated this week:   That's the little bird house/bird feeder set-up my wife has in the backyard (that middle lump is one of th...

  A couple of people have inquired about my well-being. They've seen where I live on the news and that's almost never a good thing.   But they aren't being over-dramatic. Yes, that's a glimpse of my backyard. That bird feeder is usually 3-4 feet off the ground. The amount of snow we've received since late Thursday night, the nature of it and the duration, combined, has added up to the biggest storm I've experienced since I've lived in lakeside cities, which has been more than 37 years now.   Folks are comparing it to the Blizzard of '77 in Buffalo. I was 11 back then. I didn't live in Buffalo. I lived about 4 hours away in Binghamton, where snow comes down in normal quantities. (This past weekend was the first time since I moved away from home in which I actually thought "maybe going back home to live isn't a bad idea.").   In 1977, Binghamton didn't get the kind of snow Buffalo did, but I do remember being off from school for a wee...

  You've probably heard that Buffalo got hit with an unfathomable amount of snow. Well, "unfathomable" to people who don't live where you get snow, but still it was a lot, even for us "three-feet-is-nothing" types. Totals are at 6-plus feet in some spots (my brother who lives there just got a little under three feet). I live 3.5 hours from that wonderful city but Buffalo and Watertown are on the same path when it comes to lake-effect snow. We don't get it a lot -- it usually travels to the south of us, that's why no one lives in those spots -- but when the wind is right and Buffalo gets it, we get it, too. We sure got it. We're up to nearly five feet of snow where I'm sitting. I think it's done, but after the last three days I'm a little snow-shy and will believe it when I wake up in the morning and look out my window. I defend where I live to warm-weather types quite a bit, but I admit this weekend I was genuinely wondering why I liv...

This was the scene outside in my backyard a couple of hours ago. It pretty much looks this way still, except the roads are plowed out a little, enough for me to get to work. We received more than two feet of snow in a 12-hour period overnight and this morning. It makes the thought of "maybe I'll head over to Target and see if there's any 2020 Heritage" a ridiculous one. Obviously I won't be doing that until Monday at the earliest. There's really not much to do around here when the weather is like this. Once shoveling and inside "responsibilities" are finished, I'm down to either playing with my cards or going online to see what other people are doing with cards. It's that second part that gets me in trouble -- or, more accurately, gets me irked. It's just a little thing really. But it's bothered me for years. It comes up quite frequently and I've heard it more often now that Heritage is out. Twice already, I...

One of my favorite quotes was said by that known literary poet, that erudite intellectual of the ring, Mike Tyson. Iron Mike once said "everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth" and ain't that the truth. I experienced this just last night. The "punch in the mouth" was the foot of snow piling up sideways outside of my place of work in a matter of hours. You see, where I live gets snow -- snow worth mentioning on the national news. Perhaps you saw us on your television this morning. Maybe you saw the CBS weather guy, standing next to a snow-covered holiday display in the center of Adams, N.Y. Then they aired an interview with a snowplow driver, who plows roads in my county. And they interviewed my county's sheriff. And they ended it like they always end it, " ... and more is on the way." It snows where I live at a rate that no larger city (besides Buffalo) could handle. I've seen snow all my life, but I've never seen ...