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.

1:30 p.m.

It's been snowing since about 11:00 a.m. Just returned from Milford and the SAT's. A fine, but not quite powdery snow. Quickly coating the roads. The main road, State Route 1, was mostly snow-covered. Some places (where the road crews are better, I guess) were more wet than snowy. Saw only one vehicle in a ditch; an SUV, of course.

The SAT!

Wow. This morning I dropped Colleen at Milford High School to take the SAT. She's only in seventh grade, but is taking the test as a part of her application for the Academic Challenge program.

The school lobby was loaded with high school kids there to take the test in their normal course of college applications. Luckily, the test administrators called all the seventh grade takers over to one side and set the kids up fairly quickly in their own testing rooms.

It was a strange feeling to leave her there to take a test that I still associate with that period in my life when I was making the transition into adulthood. She's still a kid, but she's very bright and she's more grown-up every day.

And I get older too.

Inauguration Day, 2005

Mom and Dad taught me: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.









I hope folks are bundled up for the parade. I hope they don't get too cold.

Let It Snow

We finally got snow in Delaware. I welcome it, though I was saddened to learn that there was a fatal wreck on Route 113 today, caused by the weather.

This has been an odd winter. Conditions have been all over the weather map, from 60s one day to 30s the next. Our collective sinuses are taking a beating.

Today's snow was light, only a dusting really. But it was a pretty snow. The cold that finally settled over us in the last few days brought the ground temperatures down low enough that this snowfall stuck and did not melt. It also fell as fine light snow, rather than the clumpy wet stuff we often get in this part of the world where winters are generally warmer.

Above is a shot from late afternoon, looking north up Route 30, towards Milford. I pulled over in an old parking lot about halfway between Milford and Milton to see if I could get some sort of photo. It was my only chance to stop on my way to get Christina from her dance class, so I took the best shot I could.

I realize that this just isn't much snow, after all, I learned my snow-driving skills in central Maine. But for Delaware, especially downstate. A snow like this, especially given hat it quickly covered the roads and packed down, is a rare chance to slip and slide.

The drive home was slow and cautious. People here are not used to driving in snow, though they get some practice. About half of folks drive way too slow and the other half way too fast. I try to lead by example; not so slow as to be an obstacle but not so fast that I can't plan ahead, slow down and stop without having to slam on the brakes or yank on the wheel.

It's all about control.

A Day at the Circus

Sunday evening, Karen and I took the girls to the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center (such a grand name) in Salisbury to see the new Hometown Edition of "The Greatest Show on Earth!" This is a one-ring version of the classic Ringling Brothers circus, scaled to smaller venues and designed to involve more of the audience in the experience.

This "Greatest Show" starts with a chance to meet and greet with the performers for an hour before the show actually starts.


This is a view across the one ring to the entrance/exit to backstage. The "orchestra" sits above, with several levels for the clowns and ring-master to play with.


In this circus, the ringmaster was also a snake-handler and alligator wrangler. This is a baby snake -- a python? -- that he whipped out of a basket just by our seats. The folks two rows ahead of us immediately sprang from their seats and headed for the exit when this snake came out. Here, the snake calmly regards Christina, who had the aisle seat.


There were just a few clowns, but they were very talented. This fellow had a recurring musical theme and, at one point, brought a young girl out of the audience, dressed her in a red hat and tailcoat, and had her play along. No, I didn't get a good picture.


They made a great point of talking about the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation. There were only two elephants in this circus, a few trained dogs and three or four horses. They seemed happy enough. There were protests earlier in the run, by local students concerned for the animal's well-being. We did not see any protestors on Sunday night.


A good time was had by all.

The Terrible Towel Miracle!

I have a new favorite sportscaster, at least for the moment: Myron Cope, color commentator for radio broadcasts of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I'm a huge fan of Sam Huff and Sonny Jurgenson, who broadcast the Redskins. As a lifelong 'Skins fan, I won't be abandoning Sam and Sonny anytime soon, but I will adopt Myron for this year's play-offs. After all, the Redskins just aren't there yet.

I enjoy listening to sports on the radio. I had a brief radio career, so I know something of the art, and I got started in that career running the board for a small station in Waterville Maine for radio broadcasts of Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics games in the early 80's. What I know of baseball I really learned from listening to Jon Miller, back when he was a radio man.

I stumbled on Myron Cope by accident last night during a parenting odyssey across south-central Sussex County. Christina was due at a birthday party from 5 to 8 in Selbyville. Colleen was invited to another from 7 to 10 about half an hour north in Millsboro.

So, of course, we left Lewes at 4:00, picked up one of Colleen's compatriots (Miriah, who's Mom would handle the late-night pick-up and bring-home), and drove to Selbyville. We dropped Christina in a garage booming with loud country music in Selbyville for a 9th birthday party, with dancing. We took Colleen and Miriah up to Millsboro where we had a gala dinner before dropping the two at a 14th birthday party in a garage booming with rock music. Then we drove back to Selbyville where we picked up a danced-out Christina, and so back home, at about 9:00 p.m.

Somewhere in there, I started wandering the AM radio dial looking for the Jets/Steelers game. That's when I heard Myron. Myron Cope has that raspy/gravelly western Pennsylvania accent that I first heard from my Father-in -Law John Hudack. I always enjoy watching ball games with John because his take on the games is no-nonsense, straightforward, and of the "Look-a that, willya?" variety.

That's Myron Cope. Except with Cope you add a crazed hyper-excitement. This was doubly true at the end of the Jets game. We got to hear the Jets try a long field goal with time running out to break a tie; it missed, just outside. And Cope went nuts. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone in broadcasting get so excited that he went entirely beyond human language, but Cope did.

To get a general idea of the sound, have a listen to some of the samples on Arlin's Copeisms and Exclamations page. Yoi! He credited the miss to the magic of the terrible towels being waved by fans throughout the stadium. That magic, he explained, is really reserved for play-off games. It seemed to hold through overtime as the Steelers went on to win, 20 to 17.

It was all terribly exciting. Now I have an AFC team to root for. I guess I'll have to root for the Eagles in the NFC and hope for an all-PA superbowl.

And Then the Fog Lifted

The fog finally lifted this morning. We got up close to 70 degrees today, which is absurd for January, but there was some sunshine, and some patches of welcome blue sky.


This is the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve (DNERR) Center, just outside of Dover. I was here for a meeting for most of the day. The DNERR is a state/federal partnership to preserve a large estuarine area for research and recreation. This is on the St. Jones River, where is winds through a broad tidal marsh and out to the Delaware Bay. It's a beautiful site.

We spent the whole day in this building, working our way through a technical document on water quality. It was a good and productive meeting, but I do wish we'd had some reason to wander the nature trail here. A warm day in January. Sunshine. No bugs.


I did have a few moments, as the meeting broke up, to try a few artistic shots out in the parking lot.

A Foggy, Foggy Day

It was a foggy day today in Delaware. This was the countryside west of Dover at about noon.

It was so foggy that our local TV newscasters dedicated fully the first five minutes of their 10:00 p.m. newscast tonight to video of the fog, a special weather report, and several reporters along several fog-bound roads across Delmarva telling us gravely to slow down, be careful, and watch out for puddles.

Yes, it was a major weather story in our area tonight. Not as serious as tens of feet of snow, as in the mountain west; mudslides, as in California; or a tsunami. But a serious story none-the-less.

Fog!