I was in the kitchen, when I heard a howl of wind outside.
“Well, that’s interesting!” I thought.
I went to the door, opened it, looked outside…
There was a frumious snow squall!
It was over within five minutes and the skies cleared off.
I guess this is the expected cold front coming through. There’s supposed to rain and snow showers off and on the next few hours.
I went to the grocery store this morning, and I drove out to the state park overlooking the Susquehanna. It was cloudy and windy, but not as windy as that howling wind half an hour ago.
Impressive cloud formations, though.
It looked like the ice was gone from the river.
I went to Ollie’s yesterday, and besides buying cereal and Pop Tarts, I found a book I had been wanting to read but hadn’t gotten around to buying, Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
So far, my only note, from the little bit I’ve read, is that there is no “Liberty Mountain” in Lynchburg, Virginia. Yes, there is a mountain with Liberty University’s logo emblazoned on it, which you can see from great distance (like the entrance to the minor league baseball stadium), but the mountain’s official name is Candler’s Mountain (and there’s a Candler’s Mountain Road), which is named after the Candlers, a family of Quakers who settled in the area long, long ago.
Liberty University can call the mountain whatever the hell it wants, but that doesn’t change that it’s Candler’s Mountain.
Also seen at Ollie’s…
Seeing lovable, furry old Grover caught my eye. I still have my well-worn copy of The Monster at the End of This Book. The original one, not the later update with the Red Devil, Elmo. I do not need another copy of The Monster, and I was less than impressed with the sound effects.
Disney’s Dracula, starring Mickey Mouse and the rest of the gang, was surprising to me. I would not have expected to see a Disney version of Dracula, but they actually did make a kid-friendly version of Dracula for early readers. Mickey Mouse is the Jonathan Harker character, he goes to Peppervania to execute legal contracts for a client (Dracula), and everything revolves around addictive peppers, not blood. It seemed like most of the Dracula characters are accounted for; Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris get Disneyfied. No stakings, no blood, no deaths. Just addictive, hot peppers.
There’s going to be a generation of kids very confused when they find out that Dracula has naught a pepper to be found…
A juggling starter kit also caught my eye… and it also made me quite sad.
When I was in high school, my mom gave me a juggling starter kit. There was a book and a set of juggling balls. I still have the book, but I don’t have those specific balls anymore. I could do three easily, but four was too many. (The book explained how. I couldn’t be precise enough with my left hand to do four effectively or for long.)
Sometime after college, for Christmas one year my mom gave me a tube of three juggling balls that look just like that–bold, primary colors. They’re in my living room as I type this. I think they came from Boscov’s, but don’t quote me on that. Probably either 2001 or 2006. The latter would make sense, as my mom was working for Boscov’s at the time.
I can’t use them anymore. My vision is too fractured to juggle effectively. The balls just vanish from my sight, and I lose them. I can’t keep up the rhythm for very long, assuming I’m able to get started at all.
Juggling was something relaxing I liked to do. I had squish balls at Diamond that I used to juggle when I needed to think.
The day I realized I couldn’t juggle any more, I sat on my sofa for a while in a funk.
I still get depressed about it.
I never told my mom I couldn’t juggle any more. I didn’t want to break her heart.
I’m sorry about the time I tried juggling my Rubik’s Cubes in high school and hit you with one when they collided mid-air. I wasn’t thinking. Yeah, that would have hurt like hell. I am a maroon, as Daffy Duck would say.