Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Be who YOU are and say what YOU feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -- Theodor S. Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss (with thanks to matthew_g, from whom I got it.)

Wow, my distance vision really sucks today. Everything more than a block away fades into an indistinct whitish haze. Do you think it could be weather related?

My rehearsal today got cancelled, but by the time I'd gotten word that it probably would be, I was starting to feel crashy. So I didn't manage to make a dash to Virginia, I didn't pick up milk and Prilosec, I didn't get my nails done (the acrylic is cracked on one, and all three need filling in), and I didn't move my car off Lombard St. before the snow started. But I did find the web page that allegedly displays current snow-emergency status for Maryland jurisdictions. (Interestingly, either Baltimore has not yet declared a snow emergency, or I've guessed wrong as to whether Baltimore County or the city of Baltimore gets listed without a modifier in a list of jurisdictions where every other entity is a county.)

By the time I was feeling (marginally) up to dealing with anything this morning, the streets were already slick and I decided not to spend a lot of time on highways. I did run to the grocery store, passing three closed nail salons en route (not that I can blame them for staying closed on a day when the authorities are discouraging people from driving). Since I do expect the city to declare a snow emergency, I parked on a cross street and walked the block to my door being entertained by the squeakCreak of the powder under my feet.

I resisted the urge to do as others do and stock up on everything I might need for a week snowbound, since the storm is supposed to taper off this eve... uh, about now, I think, and it's not such a huge amount of snow that it'll take all that long to deal with. I just got what I was actually out of and expected to want in the next couple of days. But I still always feel funny buying milk when folks are doing their "pre-snowstorm magcal shopping ritual" frenzy. (Have you noticed that the customary items to buy upon hearing snow forecast are the colour of snow? Milk, bread, toilet paper, and eggs. (Okay, eggs have a yellow part but they're white when you pick them up and look at them ... and bread, when considered as a loaf, is the other way 'round, with a brown crust and a white inside, but if you consider a slice ... ) Of course, I usually buy whole wheat bread, so I'm already failing to complete the spell even if I do buy the complete list, but there's enough of a pattern to make me wonder what the ritual is supposed to do.)

A linguistic peeve (there were going to be two, but then I realized the other wasn't "small") ... There's a television commercial boasting that the advertised product uses "refractive lens technology". What other kind of lens would it use? It looks way too small to use a gravitational lens, and since it's spitting out visible light, not RF or a stream of charged particles, I'm pretty sure nobody would think they were using a magnetic field if they forgot to say "refractive", so what does the word do other than add three useless syllables? (Yeah, I know the real function: to make it sound all scientifical and techilicious to folks unfamiliar with the word "refractive". Hush, and don't spoil a perfectly good snit.) [And no, I'm not forgetting "reflector lenses" -- see footnote.]

Not remembering whether making Lombard St. two-way affected its status as a Snow Emergency Route, I'd wondered whether one half of a two way street could be a SER but not the other. Deciding where to park today, I got around to checking the signs: it turns out that the outbound side is marked with familiar black-on-white signs saying, "Snow Emergency Route -- No Parking During Snow Emergency -- 9AM-9PM", and the inbound side has white-on-black signs that say almost the same thing, but 9PM-9AM. So if one chose to be extra industrious with the snow shovel and were willing to try to defend two separate spots, one could move a car back and forth during a Snow Emergency. Uh, I'm not gonna do that. I parked where I don't need to worry about being ticketed or towed until Tuesday, I should be elsewhere by then (and the snowstorm over, the streets plowed, and snow parking restrictions removed before then).

The radio in the kitchen is also a television. And the station I usually listen to isn't the strongest signal, so the tuner tends to drift a little, especially when switching back from television mode to FM radio mode. This morning I turned it on and it was between stations, so I nudged the knob and wondered how long it'd take me to zero in on WRNR again. Well when the first words I heard were "Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling," I figured I must've gotten it on the first try. (No, I was not already familiar with that song. Until the DJ announced it, I didn't know who it was. I thought the singer sounded like Jonathan Richman.) Then when I got in the car, the first song I heard on WTMD (which I can't seem to get in the house) was "White Punks On Dope" (wow, does that bring back memories ... but it was mellower than I remembered -- did someone cover it recently or was my memory wrong?).

And now that the snow isn't pouring down, and I failed to execute my plan to have the excuse of not being home, I suppose I should shovel the sidewalk.

[*]Yes, in photography we have something called a "mirror lens", but that's a knowing shorthand that means "miniature reflector or catadioptric telescope that fits on our cameras" -- when a photographer says "lens" she usually means "system of lenses" anyhow, and refers to a simple lens as a "lens element". So "mirror lens" is idiomatic (and an oxymoron); it's not a reflective lens, but rather a system of mirrors that does the job of a lens. I can't remember ever hearing an astronomer refer to that big piece of glass in the butt end of a Newtonian telescope as a "lens"; it reflects, it's a mirror.