Bleah (Part II). Cold Weather (Again). Ice (Again). But No Sick Kids.

Well. Here we are in the midst of another winter storm. At least this time the girls are over what turned out to be a full week of fever, coughing, stuffy noses and general malaise.

Unfortunately, mother nature has let us down in the snow department. We woke this morning to freezing rain and icy sleet. It's too ugly out for my usual digital camera offerings, so I decided to visit the Delaware Department of Transportation traffic camera web page and see what the weather looks like around the rest of the state.


Upstate, in New Castle County, winter looks the way it should.


In Kent County, looks like they got a fair coating of new snow. It's hard to tell if it has stayed snow; this view rather suggests rain. That's the WaWa I often walk to for lunch, by the way.


Here in Sussex County, at least in the east, we see just freezing rain soaking into minor snowfall and a layer of sleet.

It is weather like this that brings up for us the notion of moving our lives to somewhere like Vermont.

A Bad Idea

The brain trust at The Learning Channel has let Paige Davis go from Trading Spaces (In 'Spaces' Makeover, It's Curtains for Paige (Washington Post; Reg. Req.).

A "new creative direction" towards a host-less version of Trading Spaces. Nope. Sorry. That's probably not going to fly.

They lost Vern, but we came back. They lost Ty, and we came back. I think, though, that Paige has an awful lot of fans who probably won't come back.

Give Ms. Davis (actually Mrs. Mindy Paige Davis Page) credit for class, though. Her farewell statement -- posted both on her web site, above, and the TLC site -- takes the high road.

I have to confess that this was in the news earlier than today. I simply had missed it until I came upon a photo with a caption about the firing on the Washington Post web site this evening. It was one in a series of news photos I was flipping through after having enlarged a photo of a glowering VP Cheney in a bulky parka at a Holocaust memorial event in Europe.

Looks Like They'll Be More Careful This Time

Molly Murray has two stories in today's News Journal on the issue of dredged-up archeological artifacts. In the main story, Beach work mindful of artifacts, she discusses the various precautions planned by the state and by the US Corps of Engineers as they prepare to dredge sand from the ocean floor to replenish Delaware's Atlantic beaches.

There's also a companion piece, Lewes artifacts may be from 2 sites, which looks at what has been learned from the artifacts that were accidentally dredged-up from the Delaware Bay floor late last year.

As a Lewes resident, and with some interest in history and archeology, I've been watching this story and posting links to coverage of it in the past few months. There's at least one person out there with strong feeling about this issue. He, or she, prefers to remain anonymous in his, or her, comments. And they are fairly strong comments.

I hope my anonymous commenter will take some comfort from the precautions outlined in Molly's longer piece this morning. I believe that the folks running these dredging programs are trying to avoid a repeat of what happened off Lewes Beach and I give them credit for their efforts.

It may be because I am a state employee. It may also be because I worked for several years with some of the DNREC players in this story back in the early 1990s. But I have to say that I am confident that the people at DNREC, and even the feds on this project, are not evil people. They are people, and they are trying to do their jobs, serve the people of the state and protect the environment and the heritage of the state.

Stuff happens. There are always mistakes in life. What would be a problem is if we didn't try to learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them.

Delaware Route 1, east of Milton, 7:00 a.m., January 26, 2005.

I'm Not Sure Why I Noticed This, But...

When you hold a logo pen in your left hand, the logo is upside down. Are we writing-off left-handed folks when we market by pen? Or are southpaws simply used to this sort of thing?

An Icy Day

I had a meeting this afternoon at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control -- DNREC -- where I started my career as a state employee many, many years ago. DNREC's offices are in a converted factory complex and surround a very pleasant courtyard.

Today the eaves along the perimeter were sheathed in ice and sported impressive icicles. Of course, I had to take a photo or two.

Bleah. Cold Weather. Ice. Sick Kids.

Here we are with temperatures outside down at about 10 degrees and kids inside running high fevers and coughing away. There is a sheet of ice over all outdoors. What fun.

At least state government offices are opening late, so I can stay home and help with the first hour or so of nursing. I guess I'll try to clear my calendar this week so I can take a few full day's of sick-kid duty.

10:00 a.m. (Day Two)

Things look a little nicer this morning. It was a cold and windy night, but slight snow showers have dressed the ice up and made it a bit more pretty.

Looks like nasty day on the roads, though. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next day or so with schools. Around here, the main roads get cleared fairly well when this sort of storm happens. It's the back roads, however, where most of the students live, that stay ugly. My money is on at least a major delay on Monday.

And how did Christina's snow-girl fare?

Two things are clear. The prevailing wind in this storm has been in this poor snow-girl's face. And ice is heavy, heavy stuff.

5:48 p.m.

Crap! Freezing Rain. It didn't change back to snow.

To our north and west, this wet was all snow, and lots of it. In coastal Sussex County, we have puddles instead and should have iced slush in the morning. Curse you, warming influence of the Atlantic Ocean.

All the have-to-stay-at-home and none of the pretty-white-fluffy-world. Crap.

3:00 p.m.

It's just recently switched over to freezing rain, with a hint of sleet. Icky. Christina did get a chance to get out and make a snowman.

Well, a small snow-girl, in point of fact.