Yay for being emergency personnel? The drive to work wasn't too hard. There was a slog, but that was because of folks stuck in the left lane.

My only fear is that someone will park their car in front of my house. It's going to happen. I didn't shovel all that time so that someone else could park there.

We wrapped up 1900's House last night. That was a good show.

Jenny is now 2/3 of the way through the novel and giving good comments. The best so far is "I couldn't stop at two chapters, and I'm only stopping now as an act of willpower."

The power came on a 7:15 pm.

It took four sessions of shoveling to dig out the car. Or was that five?

Best things about snowpocalypse: napping!!! Thank God for thick featherbeds.

While the house warmed back up, the cat camped in front of the register and didn't move for an hour.

The power is DOWN. The whole neighborhood is out. The one way to the internet is through phone lines routers on battery backup or cell-phone system.

The snow is knee deep. It's still coming down.

The house is holding steady at 57 degrees. We've lost one degree since 7am.

We're off to see Magnetic Fields tonight.  They squeak in just before the next snow deluge.

Hers Truly has been watching videos about making cakes recently. Especially fascinating is the Fashion Doll Cake, the Teddy Bear cookies, and the pancakes that look like a pig.

The router went down at home and I couldn't even get into it. I suppose it was hacked. I reset the admin password to something harder. That's not perfect, but anyone with a clue will get past my meager attempts at security. It's fairly easy to crack domestic encryption and imitate a MAC address. If I'm really paranoid, I'll upload new firmware.

Wrapped up the D&D game on Sunday. The folks finished Keep on the Shadowfell. If they ever read the module, they won't recognize it for all the modification and ad-libs that I threw in.

Saturday was snow.

Friday night, Hers Truly stayed over Aunt Judy's and Jenny and I went to a tappas in Rockville. Jenny wondered at the teenagers being out and I had to realize that we were the ones out early and wrapping up early.

The cat is slowly going bug-nuts with all the self-imposed staying inside.

Who else uses Google as a spell-checker, especially for those words you can never spell right to such an extreme that no spell checker can deduce them?

Closing the door for bedtime is a game. It's Hers Truly's job, but she doesn't move, so you intone, "Who's job is it? Is it mommy's job? Mommy gets to close the door!"

"No!" is the response, and she'll close the door.

Lately, this has been reaching extremes. "Is it the nutcracker's job?" HT: "No, nutracker has a drum!"

"Is it the laundry basket's job?" "Nooooo"

We get creative.

Lately, my threats have been getting silly. "If I have to count to three, I'll so something silly." "No! No silly!"

Yes, I can get my daughter crying because I threaten her with silliness.

Now that we have corporate overlords, we can breathe a sigh of relief and wave the "culture war" goodbye. These guys have more money than all the Christian conservatives put together. Congressmen no longer have to kowtow to the religious right just to raise money, and the corporate overlords don't give a damn about anything other than profit.

Time to catch up.

I worked alot last weekend on a system move. Our stuff must go to the new data center. Lotsa overtime.

Jenny brother Mark was in town, and he came over on Tuesday.

Hers Truly has been staying up increasingly late. She stays in her room, she just doesn't go to bed. Well, that's her problem. This may mean the end of afternoon naps. Or not.

I finally got DDO working under Linux. (Talk about kludgy!) It's good for a free diversion of monster slaying.

Jenny tells me that I'm the only person who uses the phrase "hither, tither, and non." A quick Google search turns up "hither, tither, and yon." Don't know where I changed "yon" to "non".

One game at bedtime is "Who closes the door?"

US: "OK, it's time to close the door."

Hers Truly: <does anything but listen>

US: "OK. It's Monkey Palunkie's turn to close the door!" [Substitute freely for closer of door]

Hers Truly: No. Hers Truly closes the door!

I'll jump on the book meme.

I just wrapped up All The King's Men. Before that was Mircea Eliade's book on Shamanism.

I'm starting on Mircea Eliade again, this time his three book series, "A History of Religious Ideas." I adore hard-core comparative religion.