“You still remember, Admiral!”

“I cannot help but be touched. I, of course, remember you.”
–Khan Noonian Singh, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

I’m thinking of that quote because after several weeks of a very mild start to our winter, this week winter decided to show up. It began with a big storm that barreled by us the other day, in such a way as to give us very strong winds from the southeast, which is extremely unusual here. That storm, on Wednesday, knocked out our power at home for eight hours.

And now, as I write this (about 5:40pm on Saturday), another storm system is blasting past us, with more traditional 716 winter effects: high winds again (because we always seem to have high winds nowadays) and lake effect snow that may result in three feet of snow “in the most persistent snow areas”. Will Casa Jaquandor be in the most persistent snow areas? As always, there’s really no predicting specifically what the snow bands will do…but also as always, I like our chances to get a poundin’. This storm is already shutting things down all over the region. The County Executive has instituted a full driving ban starting at 9pm, the Governor pre-declared the State of Emergency yesterday, and the grocery stores all got rocked yesterday.

Oh, and the NFL actually postponed the Bills-Steelers playoff game scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, to Monday at 4:30pm. Most people are applauding this decision, but as always, a small chorus of very strange people think the game should somehow still go on. I’m trying not to see this as another data point in our society’s long descent into irrational selfishness, but make of that what you will.

This makes me wonder: If God gave me a choice, would I take three feet or more of snow but the power stays on the whole time, or would I take a ten hour power outage, but only one foot of snow? In honesty, I have to say that I’d take the snow and the power. Snow doesn’t bother me nearly as much as powerlessness does.

So…here we go. Stay tuned!

Oh, and the doggos are fine….

And so it goes….