My Toes are frozen

Ice cream cone, marshmallow topped cupcake, or stone seat meringue?:
An MNC's On-premises geo-psychologically-engineered geyser "new faithful", fallen micro-mini-"Honey I shrunk the Galactic artifact" underwater blackhole, or the early beginnings of Hidero-Fontaine Lollipop Nebula in its star-cradle?

Spoor-trail of: 1) an unknown quadrupedal Abomininumamlnemul Snowman 2) chemically snot-fused-pseudo-siamese-twinned snow bunnies wearing 36 inch platform boots or 3)the U.S. government's new All-Terrain boot-covered Sno-Unicycle on field trials?
No matter what your choice, or what you think the answers are, it's painfully obvious that
Ohio got hit by a whole lot of snow, and temperatures are plummeting closer and closer to zero fahrenheit! It's still a fun experience, but I have to devote more and more brain power to make sure my ears or toes don't just freeze and drop off.

Perversely, the office thermostat is out of whack. Temps in the office are worthy of dry sauna. So much so that I have to take freeze breaks. While pepperdemon takes a nicotine break, I go out and infuse my chinky-pores with cold, dry Ohio air, enough to last me long enough to do some decent work. Here's what else I see on my other butt-chilling breaks...

the office frozen-over lake

Sqweasel sno-blower paths running in straight lines from tree to tree...

Bridge over frozen waters - two feet of snow on the grounds blocks off access to this bridge for anyone who doesn't mind cold feet...
More? Boy! I'm glad you asked..
The remnants of ploughed snow for this week.
The driveway to my apartment is now in a white valley fifteen feet deep. Mayfield Canyon!

Minosian Burps

Had a nice treat today, Kind Boss brought Pepperdemon and me out for a concert and dinner. If you're thinking it was an ordinary concert and ordinary dinner, think again..

The concert
========
I got to hear the Hilliard Ensemble at Harkness Chapel (at Case Western Reserve University)! They were practically flawless. Audience was good too, they waited for the end of a piece before coughing and shuffling. Well behaved civilised concert-goers, unlike the savages back home. Kind Boss brought her husband and kids along (Hi Tom, Sophie and Daniel!). You can sorta see them in the pic. Sorta. If you think this pic is bad, it's because of mini-hail pelting my head, and a very very cold wind freezing my hands when I take them out of my pocket for more than 5 seconds.

The interior of the Chapel is rather nice, if not quite 'authentic'. Apparently, a lot of the original sandstone was replaced, due to discoloration. Acoustics were still good though... Wonder if Organ Mistress knows of this pipe organ here.. An exterior pic - taken in haste due to cold, and ugly generator near the side..


After a very nice medieval a cappella concert, we went to this nice-looking Greek/Indian restaurant in our portable-petroleum-powered igloo. Owner's Greek and wife is Indian, so they have both Indian and Greek dishes on the menu. Did you know that Pakoras actually goes quite well with Hummus? Here's a pic of my Island of Minos Stir-fried-Steak-and-shrimp.

Yum!

My morning view today - we haven't had any direct sunlight for a while, so this was welcome.. except when I tried to watch a borrowed DVD in the sunlight. bleah.

So why Yum?

Lunch! Roasted red potatoes with Country-style pork ribs, marinated with cajun seasoning and dijon mustard, roasted to just-cooked tenderness...

While I'm warm and well-stuffed:
It's snowing again! Dunno if you can make out the mini-snow flakes - they're so fine, it looks foggy.

Chipotle in the Snow

Boy was I productive today!

Not only did I finish doing my laundry for the week, I also washed out the microwave roomie had been polluting for two weeks, and collected the freshly roasted UnCharredbucks coffee I ordered a couple of days ago. Yum! This day is so exciting! I even used the large commercial-grade dryer for my non-delicates! Wow!

Plus!!! My skin is flaking off! Who'da thunk it? OK, so maybe that's not so exciting. Just bothersome, having to lube up so often.

Pepperdemon and I decided to get some air, exercise and groceries this afternoon, all at the same time! We walked 1.5 KM over rough, undulating terrain. Only careful podiatric placement and split-second nap-of-the-earth navigational strategy served to keep two butts from causing serious damage to an iced-sludge-topped-with-white-snow-encrusted road.

On the way back, JavaMaso and PepperChist jointly decided to refuel at a local(what else would it be, Intergalactic?) Tex-Mex place:
Can't see the name?
The nappy.. um, napkin is saving the Fajito Burrito from stage fright, but it's under there.
Word to Spice-heads out there: Order the Hot salsa. Don't even bother with Medium - there's barely a buzz.

Now over to Pepperdemon, who will now talk about the pseudo excitement somewhere near our apartment building... sometime soon.

Veni, Vidi, Amex

This is the last of the "Great Caesar" quotes... at least for some time.

But it is accurate though. Why? Because I finally found my XXL Weatheredge 3 System parka, that's why! When I post pics of me in it, you'll see it. I have finally managed to fully utilize my Winter Allowance®! In the meantime, stay tuned, and Don't Touch That Dial! (er.. mouse.)
Pepperdemon (not pictured) and I were mercifully driven in slo-mo by our gallant and discount-hungry roommates to yet another Prime Outlet, but this time, somewhere around Medina or Burbank, Ohio. Going Southwest too, not Northeast (or some other random cardinal direction) to Amish Country.

Other than boring highways and being sucked in by hypersonic 18-wheelers, we saw a lot of:
After doing some guy-style-shopping (go in, try, buy, get out), I parked my frozen butt (did I mention that Prime Outlets advocates a distributed store policy? You have to walk more than you shop) on a cafeteria seat, and:
Hey, I gotta live up to my name right? By the way, at 7pm, this Americano sucked big time.
Speaking of which, time to go down to the apartment lobby and see if my coffee package has arrived. Yup, after suffering a pound of Charbucks®, I ordered from a local coffee roaster.

Field Report pending!

DQ Blizzard

Darned Qold Blizzard is what I'm talking about!

If you've been reading my blog, you'd know that I'm currently in Ohio. What you might not now (unless you're in Ohio) is that there's a winter storm pounding the state. Aaaand since I'm so fortunate as to be within spitting range of the great lakes, there's area effect snow.

Translation? This ...

is now this...

Take a few moments, and examine the two images again.

OK, now that you've crossed your eyes a little, and maybe gotten a bit hypertensive from the eyestrain and holding your breath, let's continue.

"Huh?" you say. Well, I don't blame ya. See, what happened is this. We had some nice light snow flurries that coated the county in soft, powdery snow. Cool! Then we had two days of heavy snow that coated all the trees in snow, even the bare nekkid tree you saw just now. Then there was intense wind (travelling faster than a sofa falling off a 40 story building) that blew all the snow right off again, leaving the formerly snow-clothed tree, bare nekkid again.

I kid you not! This is what that tree looked like before the blizzard...
blew the snow and leaves off. Even the building.

OK, so before I lose my credulity completely, here's what the carpark looked like two blizzards ago:
Aaaaaaand then, to top my day off, this happened...
No, it's not that some people got locked out of the office and decided to spend some time freezing their collective buns off. There was a fire! It was like Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!!Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!!
OK, you get the picture, right? So we're all semi-panicking and grabbing coats and running helter-skelter (in an orderly and dignified fashion), being sonically assaulted by the Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!! Breeeeeee!!, running the gauntlet from cube to stair to hallway to the blessed silence of the not-on-fire outside. The outside, where it's -20 celcius, with wind chill. The outside, where colleagues have stopped wincing in sonic agony and are wincing in pain at nerves tortured by frostbite and coldburn.

Several minutes of shivering and turning blue later, we get loudhailed by a fire warden, informing us penguins that it was OK to re-enter the building. I think we narrowly missed trampling the fire warden on the way in. Turns out there was no fire. Cafeteria employee bumped a fire alarm on her way from oven to deep fryer and forced an site-wide evacuation and mass-freeze. I tell ya, I have extreme sympathy for the guy that just finished his sweaty workout in the gym. All he had on was a sweaty cotten T, running shorts and track shoes. Man, that guy is getting pneumonia for sure.

Oh, yeah, I also did some work today.

I have work!

At long last, after months of blunting the razor-edged slingblade that is my grey matter with sodium, glucose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, dosetose and ambidextrose, I get some real honest-to-goodness-bona-fide-brain-cooking-eye-watering- hair-follicle-loosening-weirdo-tech-comm-any-old-how-edit-a-
300-page-doc work!

Whoo Hoo?

Don't get me wrong. I welcome the work. I welcome the opportunity to earn my measly pay and flex some neurons, nevermind that my cube has no ceiling light.. At least I got my name on the wall...Oh, those medals on the wall of my cube? They're not mine. Neither are the STC awards on the wall. Nope. Those belong to Robin Boldt. Who's Robin? The owner of the cube in which I have been assigned to work/squat for the duration of my training. I occupy the cube, but the final reality belongs to Robin. Stuff around me resonates of Robin (other than having her name on it, of course), but thankfully doesn't smell of Robin (unlike my roomie, whose fragrance fills the apartment in which I am condemned to live). Nope. On a more cosmic time scale, I am merely a ghost, flitting aimlessly about, anchored by invisible bonds to this confined space.

Once in a few half-lives of a free neutron, I am driven by primal urges (sweat, odour, narcolepsy) to seek a less bounded domain: This is where I freeze my butt off every work day.