@#$%&ng snow

Word of the Day:

thaumaturgy \THAW-muh-tuhr-jee\, noun:
The performance of miracles or magic.

The snow began at 12 pm today, and just now stopped (9 pm). We got a good 8 inches of the crap. The girls' school was canceled before any snow even fell. Cincinnati sure knows how to panic about snow. But this time it was warranted. Swami called after he got home and it took him 2 1/2 hours to get back from the....yak corral.

Nellie and Boomer are bird watchers, too. Since I spent the day looking out the window, they did the same, trying to figure out what the heck I was looking at.

@#$&*ng snow.

The birds ate and ate all day. I supplied them with sunflower and safflower seeds, peanut butter, peanuts, insect suet, thistle, and granola bars.

Boomer loves to play out in the snow, but his little Boston body is ill-equipped for this kind of cold, so I limited his outside play time.

Nellie, on the other hand, being a Rottweiler/Labrador/German Shepherd/What-have-you type of dog, she can stay out there all day, it seems. She has taken to rolling every time she goes out, because she has some dry skin and needs to scratch.

This was the scene at 1 pm. Not too bad.

This is 4 pm. About 5 inches so far.

I kept going out with the broom and sweeping the snow away from the ground under the feeders to help the ground-feeding birds. The snow was so fluffy that the birds would land and they would sink up to their breasts. It would have been cute if it hadn't been so sad to watch.

Ahhh...I love my red-bellied woodpecker. Oops! He has peanut butter on his beak!

I picked up some dried mealworms, instead of live ones, because I have no way to keep them awake and alive in the cold. The starlings found it first. Any wonder they have taken over the country? They are always the first to exploit a food source.

I was hoping the Carolina wrens would take a few. But they wanted to either sit on the front tire of Geoff's car, or eat the spilled peanuts off the ground.

I made a lean-to for the dish of worms, to keep the snow off. One of the juncos investigated, but decided to go back to the seeds.

While Nellie keeps watch over the birds, Isabelle takes a picture of me taking a picture of her.

"Aaaaarrrroooooooo!"

Who wouldn't want this dog? Look at that. A kid scratching his belly while another dog licks his face. What a good dog.

Boomer Buns

Boomer lick

Nellie lick

A prayer for tomorrow:
Please, let me get the car out of the driveway so I can get the Hell out of this house
before I go coo-coo bananas.

Since I sat on my duff all day, when Geoff came down for dinner, I just HAD to do something constructive. So I went out and shoveled the driveway. Ever sweat and freeze at the same time?
Right now, Deliverance is on AMC. I have never seen the whole movie, but I always seem to turn it on right at the 'squeal like a pig' scene. That's disturbing. And what's on next?
Children of the Corn. Jeepers. More unfriendly locals.