The Big Green House

Snowpocalypse Now

As you may have heard, we’ve had a bit of weather lately. I loves me some snow, but this is just silly. We got about six or seven inches last Thursday, another seven (give or take) on Saturday, and maybe four on Sunday. It’s all light and fluffy powder. (Well, except for that bit of freezing rain we got Saturday night – that just made a thin crust of ice over what we’d already gotten. It was kinda like when you get one of those soft-serve ice cream cones that gets dipped in the crunchy chocolate coating, but with more dirt and dog pee.)

How’s traffic, you ask? Well, in a word, I’d have to say that it’s fucked. The roads are sheets of compressed snow with various layers of ice on top. Getting around by car is difficult, at best. Going by foot is easier, yet still treacherous. I know this for a fact, since the ice weasels got me while crossing an intersection yesterday. I slipped, fell, and spent the majority of my 48th birthday in the ER of the UW Medical Center. Not because I’m severely injured or anything, I hasten to add; it’s just a fairly mild sprain which I’m compressing and elevating even as we speak. (I’m getting the hang of the crutches, but they are not my friends.)

No, my extended stay was due to two things: the hospital was short-staffed, and there was no ground transportation to be had – no cabs, no busses that went anywhere near home. We were able to call a neighbor who was brave/foolhardy enough to fire up his Forester and come pick us up. If Science Girl didn’t work in another wing of the hospital, I might very well have been stranded there, since she’s the one who can remember phone numbers.

Anyway, yeah. Not really what I’d had in mind for birthday fun. And now I’m trapped here in the house, held prisoner by a sea of ice and slush. Whoo. On the other hand, it's kinda pretty outside. See my pre-carnage pictures here, if you're so inclined.

Pipe Wrench Fight!

It's hard enough being born in the first place: who would want to be born again?

Oh hi! Remember when I said I wasn’t gonna have a lot of screwing-around-online-time when I switched to day shift? Turns out I was mostly right.

Even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again. (Although apparently there’s a little extra difficulty with that this year.)

So. Wutcha been up to?

Me? Not much. We went down to Portland last week for Science Girl’s birthday and spent way too much time & money at Powell’s. That was fun.

While we were there, I read (and was utterly charmed by) this little article. Man, I wish we’d had a club like that back in the day. Although we did have our own confused little music posse, having access to better equipment would have been nice. I want to buy one of their t-shirts so I can support their club, but it seems that you need to be on the myspace to do so and, well, I have enough trouble keeping this thing going.

Also, while we were down in Stumptown, I picked up a copy of the new Fucked Up CD. Holy cow, is it good! Although I keep seeing references to their being “hardcore”, which just leaves me scratching my head. Maybe it’s just due to the utter degradation of the term “punk rock”, but I’ve certainly heard my fill of hardcore in this life (and then some), and this ain’t anything like the strictly defined musical straitjacket that is/was hardcore. Or maybe things have just changed, I dunno, I’m older than dirt now & they say that the memory is the first thing to go…which, y’know, is probably a good thing. If I had to put a label on the Fucked Up sound (and I don’t but people seem to like that sort of thing, so…), I’d probably go with something stupid like “progcore”, but really it’s just glorious noise of the rockin’ sort that we so love here at TBGH. You should check it out.