First Snow

I posted a blog titled "The Subaru and the Snowstorm". But as night fell, so did the snow. I just took this photo from a front window in my house, the first snow of 2025:

Nuria took a photo, too, for her "girls" in Costa Rica. Of course, her three girls are in their 30s and 40s, but two of them have children that might be interested in seeing snow. Too bad they're a thousand miles away, but at least today we can take a picture and have it ready to transmit within seconds. 

It's the first snow of 2025 for my central Virginia city. The forecast calls for snow early tonight, changing to a wintry mix (rain, snow, and sleet) then changing to rain and snow for tomorrow. Fortunately, Nuria has tomorrow off work. Depending on the condition of the roads in the morning, the store may be closed tomorrow. 

It's midnight – time for me to go to bed. G'night, everyone.

The Subaru and the Snowstorm

The weather forecast calls for possible snow later today, then again tomorroiw. I told Nuria that she might have snow to contend with when she leaves work at 5PM today. Then my thoughts turned to an incident that happened many years ago.

I was living and working in Roanoke, Virginia at the time. The company was located at the Sheraton Drive exit off I-81. It began snowing and everyone went home, except for one employee named Melissa. She stayed and worked late. 

It was dark when I received a phone call from Melissa. She was at work and her car was stuck – the snow in the parking lot was too deep for her vehicle. So I climbed back into my Subaru, which had four wheel drive, and returned to the work location. Though the snow in the parking lot had gotten deep, the Subaru had no problem driving in it. I picked up Melissa and we got back on I-81.

The interstate highway was empty of traffic, except for a snowplow that was applying salt to the road surface. I followed the snowplow until I had to exit I-81 and turn onto I-581, an interstate "spur" that goes through the heart of Roanoke. I can still recall driving down I-581. There was no other traffic, in either direction, north or south. My Subaru was the only vehicle on the road. I drove to the Colonial Avenue exit and dropped off Melissa at her home, and then I drove to my apartment on Walnut Avenue. I didn't see any moving vehicles on that entire trip, except for the snowplow. I had no problems driving in the snow – the Subaru was a champ. I parked in the apartment's parking lot and returned to my apartment. 

By morning the snow was deep enough that the Subaru and I had to wait for the parking lot to be "pushed" before we could leave. That was fine; I had nowhere important to be. I looked outside at the white landscape for a while, then returned to my rocker-recliner chair, picked up the TV remote, and switched on the TV. I was prepared to go nowhere for a while.

Macy's

It's New Year's Day plus One.

Nuria left the house at 9:15 this morning, off to her job at Macy's. She loves working there and she's very good at what she does, which is to sell products and sign up customers for credit cards. She is a natural-born salesperson. She could sell snow to Eskimos. For example, while the young salesgirls in her store stay behind the counter and chat with each other, Nuria is out on the floor asking customers how she can help them. When she sells a product, she asks the customer if they have a credit card, and if they don't she asks if they would like to apply for a credit card, and she'll sign them up for that. She hustles. Nuria once worked for a clothing manufacturer. She was Administrative Assistant to the Vice President of Manufacturing. She has an impressive resume, which I blogged about two years ago here.

Nuria wants to see snow. I like snow, too, as long as I don't have to shovel it off my front walk, or clear a path from my back door to my garage. I used to live in Roanoke, Virginia, and sometimes we got a good snowfall. In fact, there were times when I couldn't drive my car out of the parking lot of my apartment complex because the snow was above my car's bumper. Even though my vehicle had 4-wheel drive, there are limits – you can't drive when the snow is above your car's bumper. That car was a Subaru. My current vehicle is a Jeep Grand Cherokee and it has higher ground clearance. It, too, has 4WD (of course). It would take a lot of snow to stop it. But today, central Virginia is sunny with an occasional cloud on the western horizon. In other words, it's a beautiful day. 

Nuria is supposed to be getting off work at 4PM. Often, her manager will ask her to work until 5PM or later. She always says "Yes" to that request. She loves working at Macy's. It's a shame the store will be closing in three months. Nuria tells me about all the shoplifting that she witnesses in the store. The store apparently is losing money despite selling a lot of high-end products. I think the store is being shoplifted into oblivion. As I said, it's a shame.

New Year's Day

Today is/was New Year's Day, 2025. My partner Nuria is at work. Yes, Macy's is open today. But only for another three months. Our Macy's will be closing forever in March or April. Nuria is so happy in her job at Macy's. After Macy's closes, I hope Nuria, if she wants it, can find a job equally satisfying as her Macy's job.

I drove to Walmart and bought a box of firelogs and a few other items. Then I went by Macy's and chatted with Nuria for half a minute. She was busy, of course, and I didn't want to take much of her time. 

I intend to burn one of the firelogs tonight. I'll put the log in the fireplace insert and I'll set fire to the log and leave the insert's doors open with its fans running, blowing warm air into the room. I like to turn off the living room lamps so that the room is reasonably dark, and then Nuria and I will sit on the sofa and watch the flames dancing on the burning firelog. It's almost hypnotic.

Anyway, I was back home with my Walmart purchases when I thought of my Jeep. In particular, I thought about the crankcase oil. I hadn't checked it in a long time. So I went to my garage, raised the Jeep's hood, and pulled the dipstick out of the crankcase. The oil level was one quart low. I drove to Autozone and bought a quart of 10W-30. I drove home, parked the Jeep in my garage, and poured the oil into the engine.

My immediate chores were complete. I returned to the house and began writing this blog post. I was tired from all the hard work I almost did. 

I hope your New Year's Day was more interesting.

Post Christmas

Christmas is behind us now. I like Christmas but I never know what to buy as a gift. I used to worry about it but I've given up worrying. My father had the same handicap. He would go to a drugstore on Christmas Eve and pick up something for my mother. It was always something lame. I think my mother had low expectations and she was certainly never disappointed. 

Nuria helped me by telling me what to buy for her. She wanted a new watch. She showed me what to buy her from the Internet. It was a twenty dollar watch, with a tiny window that displayed the day and date. She insisted that was all she wanted. 

Now it was Nuria's turn to buy me something. Nuria bought me a Tommy Hilfiger coat (with a hood) from Macy's. It's very warm. The regular price was $225 but I think it was on sale. 

Nuria also bought me a flashlight. This is not one of the old-style flashlights that has a couple of batteries and an incandescent bulb. This is a 21st century flashlight that is small and evidently has a nuclear-powered light source. You can press a button to turn on blindingly bright light, then press the button again to turn it to a slightly dimmer setting (still very bright), then to a rapidly flashing setting, then off. 

My previous flashlights are old-style that let you light up the path you are walking upon. This new little flashlight lights up the neighborhood. It has rechargeable batteries, and a charging cord plugs into the side of the flashlight. It has rapidly become my favorite gadget. I don't know what she paid for it.

She also bought me a tube of shower gel by Jean Paul Gaultier. It has a nice fragrance that Nuria likes. 

According to Wikipedia, Gaultier is described as an "enfant terrible" of the fashion industry and is known for his unconventional designs with motifs including corsets, marinières, and tin cans. Wait, tin cans?  That's what Wikipedia says.

Nuria bought me a new computer keyboard. I typed so much on the previous keyboard that I wore off some of the letters. I think this is my third keyboard. 

A few days after Christmas, as darkness fell upon the land outside, I put my last firelog into the fireplace insert and lit it with a match. I kept the insert's doors open so we could see the firelog burning. In only a few minutes the log was burning cheerfully and continued burning for a few hours until Nuria and I went to bed. It was very pleasant. I need to get some more firelogs. There's going to be plenty of cold weather between now and Spring.

I hope your Christmas was nice, too.

P.S. Nuria just got home from work. As she came in the door, she handed me another tube of shower gel. This one is by Carolina Herrera. I knew Nuria wasn't finished giving me stuff. 

1974

I spent the winter of 1974 in a small, unheated cabin near Hickory, NC. To get to the cabin, I would take one of the east-west roads in Hickory, like 1st or 2nd Avenue, and drive to US 321 and then head north. Not far up 321 there was a dirt road on the right and I'd turn into that. (No doubt the road is paved now.) I'd enter a forest (now a subdivision) and drive until I came to a small cabin. It was a summer cottage and therefore it was unheated. At night (winter, remember), the room would get cold enough to freeze water left in a glass. I slept on a sofa under an electric blanket on the highest heat setting, with several "regular" blankets on top of the electric blanket. There was a sheet metal shower stall in the bathroom, but in the morning the water faucets could not be turned because they were frozen. 

I had no TV but I had a radio. At night I listened to the Larry Glick radio show that was broadcast on clear-channel WBZ 1030 in Boston. That show was a hoot. Glick would call people on his studio phone and talk to them, not telling them their conversation was being transmitted over the air as they spoke. One night he called an airplane pilot who had recently been in the news for being involved in some kind of aircraft mishap. Larry got the pilot to talk about the accident in a fair amount of detail. At the end of the conversation, the pilot asked Larry to not reveal to anyone what he had said. Larry agreed not to tell anyone about their conversation. But, of course, the entire conversation had gone out over WBZ's powerful clear-channel radio waves that probably reached all the way to Mexico.

A popular movie at the time was American Graffiti. The film was set in 1962, on the last day of summer vacation for friends Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), Steve (Ronny Howard), Terry (Charles Martin Smith) and John (Paul Le Mat). They cruised the streets of a small California town, while a mysterious disc jockey (Wolfman Jack) spun classic rock'n'roll tunes that were broadcast over 150,000 watt radio station XERB. That station today is called XEPRS-AM. (For radio aficionados, XEPRS is a Class A, 50,000-watt clear-channel station using a non-directional antenna in the daytime and a three-tower array directional antenna at night. It is licensed to Playas de Rosarito, a suburb of Tijuana in Baja California, Mexico. You can listen here.)

The year 1974 was also the year that a friend and I bought a Chevy camper van and traveled all over America with our three dogs and often with one or more hitchhikers. Fun times!

Lancaster

It's Sunday morning. Church services are on the television. I suspect the only people watching them are the believers who don't need to attend church. Ironically, the people who really need to attend church are out smashing car windows and stealing what isn't nailed down.

My partner Nuria is going to Pennsylvania tomorrow with a group of friends. They're going to the Lancaster area, where the Pennsylvania Dutch live. I've been there and I can attest that it's a beautiful area, with green pastures and white fences and, of course, horse-drawn buggies. The Pennsylvania Dutch eschew all modern inventions, except for the telephone (which must be located outside the house). They don't own automobiles or tractors, and they live the agrarian lifestyle of their forebears.

I visited Lancaster with a lady friend years ago, and I recall we had dinner in a large room with tables that seated about a dozen people per table. I think the restaurant was designed to accommodate tour groups, inasmuch as all the people seemed to be familiar with one another. We (my friend and I) went for a ride in a horse-drawn wagon that was full of other visitors to the Amish countryside, while a tour guide informed us about the Amish lifestyle.

It was a nice trip, and memorable. I'm sure Nuria will enjoy it, especially being with her friends. Anything you do is more pleasant when you have a friend with you. In fact, the person doesn't have to be a friend. I recall the first time I went to Manhattan, I made an aquaintance through a chance meeting on a Manhattan sidewalk, and he gave me a "tour" of the city. I put "tour" in quotes because we were on foot but we saw a lot of the Manhattan tourist spots, from the top of the Empire State Building to the steps of the Kennedy Center and many places in-between. On another trip to NYC I went to Radio City Music Hall and ate a meal at one of the Automats (which no longer exist).

I hope Nuria returns with some nice memories of her trip to Pennsylvania. And if not memories, then photos.

Bump In The Night

My domestic partner, Nuria, hates to drive at night. She has told her employer again and again that she can't work late because she doesn't want to drive home after dark. Nevertheless, they seem to constantly require her to work until after nightfall.

Last night Nuria was again driving home in the dark when BANG! ... she collided with another car. Here's what happened.

The night was dark. Nuria stopped at a stop sign, looked both ways, and proceeded to make a left turn to drive to my house which was located only about 100 feet from the intersection. Suddenly her car was hit by another vehicle. The other vehicle was being driven by an intoxicated individual who was driving with headlights off. Not being able to see his car in the darkness, Nuria had inadvertently pulled in front of him, The other driver tried to pass Nuria's Toyota on the right, but grazed her Toyota's right front fender. Both drivers got out of their vehicles and inspected the damage. Then Nuria ran to my front door to call the police. When I answered the door, Nuria ran into the house muttering some letters and numbers repeatedly. She was repeating the license plate number of the other car. She didn't have a pen to write it down until she got inside my house, and she didn't want to forget the plate number. Meanwhile, the other driver left the scene.

The police came and took Nuria's information. Then the officer, armed with the license plate number, looked up the address of the other driver and then drove to his house to get his side of the situation. (The other driver lives two streets from my house.) Then the officer returned. He said the other driver was indeed drunk, but claimed to have only gotten drunk after he got home. The officer printed out a police report for the insurance company (he assigned blame for the accident to the intoxicated driver who was driving with no headlights), and he gave Nuria a copy of the report for her insurance company. 

The officer left and, for a while, our conversation was about Nuria's accident. The Toyota's damage consists mainly of scrapes on the vehicle's right front fender. It certainly could have been worse. But matters slowly settled and returned to normal. Now it remains for Nuria to have her car repaired, and that will likely be a story with further adventures. 

Right Said Fred

I've been somewhat overweight for a long time. I recently weighed about 216 when my "correct" weight was 155 pounds. I will hasten to add that for me, 155 pounds would have made me a very thin person. At that weight, a breeze would have blown me over. I carried most of the excess weight around my middle. My arms and legs and even my face were fairly "normal" but, as the years passed, my middle went from size 34 to 36 to 38 to 40. 

Then in August of this year, I got sick. I don't know what the malady was, but I was sick from August 1 to August 16. Over those sixteen days, I could eat no food. I could drink water or soft drinks, but I ate nothing and struggled to swallow medicine. When I began eating again, I ate one small meal at dinnertime. That's all I could keep down. Over 16 days, my weight dropped from 216 to 197 pounds. But I thought I might be on to something. I've continued eating one small meal per day in the evening, plus snacks once or twice during the day, and my current weight is 194. My partner Nuria says I should stop losing weight when I reach 190. She says that if I go any lower I'll be too thin. I know what she's afraid of: she's afraid I'll be too sexy for my shirt. Wait -- wasn't "too sexy" a lyric in Right Said Fred's 1991 hit song "I'm Too Sexy"? I think it was.

The song of the day is I'm Too Sexy by English pop band Right Said Fred featuring brothers Fred and Richard Fairbrass. The song was featured on their first album, Up, released in 1992.

Voting, Etc.

I drove to the City Hall yesterday (September 25) and cast my early vote in the 2024 Presidential election. I got there about 12 noon, and they were moderately busy but there was no line and no waiting. I picked up a ballot, then took it to a desk where I marked my choices, then took the ballot to the vote-counting machine and fed it into the machine. That was all there was to it. From leaving my home to getting back home took about 30 minutes. The ballot also enabled voting for town council, but I didn't know any of the names on the ballot, nor their positions on any issues, so I couldn't cast a vote for any of them. I decided to vote early because last year I tried to vote on Election Day and the line to vote was so long that I knew it would take hours to get to the Voting Room, and so I left without voting. I didn't want to repeat that experience.

My partner Nuria and I went to Walmart this morning and got our 2024 flu shots. The pharmacist pushed hard for us to also get our Covid shots along with the flu shots, but we resisted just as strongly. We did that last year and we both felt miserable for several days after getting the shots. So I did some research and discovered that many people who got both shots at the same time last year reported feeling bad after the shots. We'll return next week and get the Covid shot.

I was sick last month (August). For the first 19 days, I was unable to eat a bite of food. The thought of eating anything made me want to vomit. So for 19 days, I didn't eat anything. My weight went from 216 to 197 pounds. Since I resumed eating (one small meal per day plus a couple of snacks during the day), I gained a couple of pounds to 199. I need to lose more weight so I'm going to have to double-down on not eating during the day. A small meal at dinnertime is all I really need. But it's hard to resist the call of crackers and cookies.

It's been cloudy all this week. It's overcast today, though the National Weather Service shows a picture of fluffy white clouds in a blue sky. The forecast for today reads, "A chance of showers, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 5pm." Does that sound like blue skies and fluffy white clouds?

I mowed my yard about two weeks ago, and it needs mowing again, but to do that I have to buy a battery for the lawn tractor. Those small lawn tractor batteries last about two years, and if I buy one at the end of the mowing season, and the battery is dormant this winter, it may not last two full years. So I'd prefer to pay someone to mow the yard, but there are two kinds of lawn-mowing crews. There's the crew that shows up and does a bad job, and there's the crew that shows up only once and you can never contact them again. It looks like I'm going to have to buy that battery and mow the yard myself.

Stay well people, and don't forget to vote.