Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

My office is having some lovely network issues, I'm guessing because whatever godforsaken pit they're keeping the servers in have been reclassified as Ice Station Zebra, and the tech guys are all working from their homes in the South because of the ongoing Mr. Freeze's Death Fandango and Ice Cream Social, so my day has consisted mostly of clicking, waiting, cussing under my breath, and going for more coffee. Luckily our workload is light after the three-day weekend and so we HAHAHAHA I'M KIDDING OF COURSE WE'RE TOTALLY BURIED IN SOP DOCUMENTS PLEASE SEND HELP. I really need to bring the air mattress in for days like this.

There's really not much I can say about the snow that hasn't already been shrieked by so many others. It's kind of amazing how the collective Boston response to the snow has gone from a typical "Ehh, what'cha gonna do?" to ugly, twitchy battle-scarred rage. I don't know if those not in the Northeastern thick of it realize just how effing done we all are with this. A coworker mentioned in passing that we might be getting an inch of snow today, and I yelled from four cubicles away, "BITE THY CURSÉD TONGUE, WOMAN." My one odd reaction is a small swell of pride very time I hear Boston's blizzards mentioned on the national news, like I'm proud of my city for standing there while we get repeatedly crotch-punched by a hairy Canadian in the frozen foods aisle. Go, team!

So what else has been going on? We had the kids and the grandmuffin out for a visit this past weekend while their mom went on a much-needed and much-earned yoga retreat. A good time had, which is to say that the kids didn't attempt to murder each other even once, for the first time in recent memory. The one nasty bit was picking up Abbey from her boyfriend's house on Saturday evening, smack in the middle of Blizzard of 2015 Part LXXVIII, which led to Abbey's first ever no-brakes-on-the-downhill/spinout combo experience (her comment on the matter: "We'regonnadiewe'regonnadiewe'regonnadie....", as we slid to a sideways stop at about 15 miles an hour). Since we had progeny all around us on the 14th, Andrea and I celebrated Valentine's Day on Thursday with dinner at the Watertown Not Your Average Joe's, site of our first-ever dinner date. I gave her The Runaways Vol. 1, she gave me the Criterion La Dolce Vita, because we know each other entirely too well.

This weekend is a Murder Ballads business and rehearsal weekend with cluegirl, so if y'all could pray for just a little break in the crap-falling-from-the-heavens extravaganza long enough to make the drive out to Troy, that'd be great. Stay Safe and warm, everyone.

So the Apocalypse in blowing-ice-crystal form is in progress, and we're stuck inside our Worcester apartment because the governor sez we gotta. Perfect, say I.

Having survived the Walmart Thunderdome with an actual untrampled loaf of bread in hand (French toast is on, kiddies!) and having further received comfirmation that neither my nor rain_herself's employers are hard-nosed psychopaths insistent on nose-thumbing the weather gods, my current plans for the next 36 hours are as follows:

• Not setting the alarm. At all.


• Cocoa / red wine / whiskey, dependent on which phase of the Apocalypse has kicked in.


• Snuggling with rain_herself, because what is the point of simultaneously having a pretty girl and a snowstorm if you can't curl up together under a mound of ill-matched blankets and ignore the ravages of Time? What, indeed?


• Tweeting with fellow Apocalypse survivors, and/or not tweeting and making the Illinois relatives panic.


• Continuing our pre-Oscar movie marathon, or at least the bits we can do at home. The official goal is all best Picture/Director/Acting nominees (except Into the Woods because I'm pretty sure even Meryl Streep is saying enough already); we've hit Boyhood, Wild, Gone Girl, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything so far, which leaves a ways to go yet.


• Snuggling with rain_herself some more, because if the End of Days doesn't allow me to spoon my wife, I sure as Shinola ain't going. Let it be said: she spoons divinely.


• Picking up Vivian my guitar, who I'm pretty sure misses me.


• Avoiding pants like the plague on society that they are. They should be ashamed.

Relatedly, today marks the first time I've ever put my windshield wipers in the gull-wing "up" position in anticipation of a snowstorm. I don't know why, but every time I see a pair of wipers preening in the wind like that it just makes me all slappy-like. Present company excluded, of course.