I love my truck. It is hard to tell from this photo but I “waded” through the thigh-high snow, man handled the driver’s door open, cleaned off  some of the windshied using an old broom that I keep in the truck for such occasions, and then simply drove out of the space. The mean green machine!

 I haven’t had to dig out of snow since I got it in 06. I would never have dreamed of driving through the piled up snow except once one of my neighbors borrowed my shovel (which I keep in the truck for such occasions) and then started to shovel me out and said – hey you could just drive out. Changed my life!

With this truck, I actually love to drive in the snow. I feel amazingly in control and formidable. I don’t drive recklessly. But I’m not afraid. It is a wonderful feeling that I wish I felt more often in my life under other circumstances. It is a very powerful experience.

 It has been snowing since before I got up this morning. National Weather Service said it was suppose to turn to rain. I know this is crappy photo but it is the third one I took and the best. It is my view out my bedroom window of a three-story oak tree.

Charlie, Simon and I sat out on the balcony today while the sun was still up. I heard this noise and it took me a minute to realize it was a tree branch breaking. I saw quite a few of them on my way home from work today at 11am. I’ve heard it a few times since then too. It is a primal sound I think.

And then the lights went out…

Can you see it? A crack! I guess it came with the cold last night and the 8 inches of wet sloppy snow. It stretches from the edge by the passenger door to about a quarter of the way over.

Today I found the fourth 2009 Lincoln penny reverse side. The one that represents his presidency.

 I’m still looking for the third one – is the one representing his time in the Illinois capitol.

 Since I stopped eating fast food, I have lost my main source of the new coins. When I used to commute to NYC for work, I found new coins all the time. When that ended – my main source was the fast food places along the interstate. Woe is me.

You may have read in earlier posts that my sister, who lives 1500 miles away, has an uncanny and powerful mind-altering influence over me. She makes me watch television shows that I wouldn’t normally watch. She has succeeded in making me watch such shows as Supernatural, NCIS and now Castle and White Collar. It is a humbling position to be in. I managed to deter her efforts to make me watch the Mentalist: one of my few triumphs. She has not succeeded in making me watch anything on the sci fi channel.

 She recently launched an assault and managed to sink her fangs into my brain and now I’m embarrassed to write that I’m watching Chuck. A mindless and wonderfully cast tv show set in southern California (i.e., beautiful people, beautiful scenery, beautiful apartments and beautiful nerds) about a man who “is saving the earth at $11.00 an hour”, or something like that. I succumbed last week to her barrage of hints, suggestions and threats. I watched a couple of episodes and the spell descended on me like giant wet Kleenex. I lost my will to resist and last night I OD’d. We watched 3 episodes in a row on tvgorge.com, we were linked by free wireless minutes. She made sure I got all the jokes and laughed at all the appropriate places: The agony! When we were finished I was jittery, jacked up on diet coke and consumed by a crush on one of the characters. Totally, TOTALLY out of control.

 I tried desperately to think of an anecdote to my madness. By now it was 2am and could call no one to talk me down. I needed something to counteract the forces possessing my brain. Netflix, maybe? I found a possible remedy to my condition: The Bicycle Thief. It was just what I needed: a wonderfully well-laid out plot; fully dimensional characters, fine acting, a wide range of real human emotions; beautiful black and white cinematography in post war Italy; and subtitles. Having watched that, Chuck and my sister’s grips were weakening. I wasn’t entirely myself yet so I watched The Battleship Potemkin. Silent simplicity: Mutiny!; Cinematic massacre on the steps in Odessa!; fear, panic, mayhem, rotting beef with real-live maggots, and natural beauty captured in the faces of the beleaguered Ukrainians.

 I was finally able to go to bed, feeling balance in my universe. My yin had nicely nestled back in with my yang. The sun was rising on a glorious new day as I fell asleep, to dream no dreams, to rest the rest of the truly weary.

I wrote my first review of an album! My friend, Linda Bianchi, released a Christmas album last year. The review is on CDBaby and also on Amazon. It was daunting to write about the cd. I love it and have listened to it often. But I was intimidated by the other reviews that sounded like they were from people who’d written a lot of reviews. Ultimately I am happy with the results. The album is called Christmas in New York.