Snowbound musings.

The Blizzard of Aught-Six, Take 2, has treated me much better than its earlier iteration. I escaped the office ahead of the storm and was safe at home by the time it started to dump. After spending five of the past seven days car-bound (though on four of those, the car was moving), I wasn't about to risk a sixth.

Between the snow days and the Wisconsin trek, I've lost all sense of time and place. Plus, my brain is so wired on Christmas cookies that I'm not quite capable of coalescing my thoughts into a post of any coherence. Instead, I'll wrap up 2006 with a few entirely random musings.

1. Here in Colorado, we don't often get ice storms - snow and frost are more our speed. So the crystal palace that surrounded us as we drove through Eastern Colorado and Southwestern Nebraska last week was a sight my eyes had never beheld - trees and baseball backstops and utility poles perfectly outlined in ice, shimmering in the sunshine. An easterner might recognize the danger lurking in that beauty, but I was awestruck.

2. It is possible to drive 200 miles through Wisconsin and fail to find a single cheese-curd-buying opportunity. And, also? There are no cheese curds in Iowa. This was a devastating discovery.

3. Steve's parents took advantage of the fact that we drove this time and loaded much of their basement into the Volvo. My basement, which I've spent months trying to empty, is now chock-full of the remnants of Steve's childhood nerdery. Any plans to turn that space into an exercise room have been tabled, pending disposition of assorted swords, Lord of the Rings crap, fantasy miniatures, and marginally valuable baseball cards.

4.  Steve and I are not hosting our annual New Year's party this year, and instead will be dining with friends and then heading home to watch the Tivo'ed Packers game. Our annual New Year's disaster will probably result from some sort of projectile being hurled in frustration at a wall, or maybe the cat.

5. I am giving a short presentation at a continuing legal education program next week, and will be serving on the faculty at an upcoming appellate writing program in Chicago. Preparing to teach has made me hyper-aware of how very little I know. Shouldn't it work otherwise?

6. My reaction to learning that Saddam Hussein has been executed, before the ink is even dry on the decision upholding his death sentence: Don't give Texas any ideas.