Fred and Valerie

The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are over. Despite starting with a lackluster opening ceremony amidst the grief over the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Games themselves proved to be spectacular in many respects.

Early on, the story of these Olympics was when, not if, Canada would win their first gold medal as a host country. Having failed to win any gold medals during the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics and 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, Canada was focused more than ever on standing atop the medal podium. Alexandre Bilodeau led things off for the Canadians with a gold in the Men’s Moguls event and several other Canadians followed so that Canada actually finished the Olympics with the most gold medals of any country.

While Canada finished first in gold medals, the United States finished with the most overall with 37 medals, breaking the previous Winter Olympics record set by Germany at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. And Germany was close behind in second place with 30 medals.

There were several big stories being played in the US media about the US Olympic Team leading up to the Games. Among them were Lindsey Vonn’s pursuit of Olympic gold following back-to-back World Cup championships, Bode Miller’s attempt at Olympic redemption following a controversy-filled 2006 Olympics, and several others.

However, the major stories after the Games included Apolo Ohno becoming the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete by winning a silver and two bronze medals for a total of eight, the US Men’s Hockey team winning silver after scoring a goal with just 24.4 seconds left to send the final game against Canada to overtime, Johnny Spillane winning the first ever US medal (silver) in the normal hill Nordic Combined, which he followed up with a second silver medal in the large hill Nordic Combined, and another silver medal in the team Nordic Combined.

Having been a fan of the Olympic Games for quite some time, it’s great to see the US finally being truly competitive at the Olympic Winter Games. The US has always been competitive at the more-overall-medals-available Olympic Summer Games, not having fewer than 90 total medals since Rome in 1960 (excluding the 1980 Moscow boycott). However, before 2002, the highest total number of medals for a US Winter Olympic team was 13 in 1998 at Nagano and 1994 at Lillehammer. But when the US was host in 2002 at Salt Lake City, they won 34 medals and then they followed that up with 25 medals in 2006 at Turin. Now, with 37 medals, there’s no doubt the US is on the Winter Olympics map, which is nice for a fan like me who prefers many of the sports of the Winter Olympics.

Now the Winter Olympic torch is passed from Vancouver to Sochi, Russia. If you’ve never heard of the city, fear not. It’s 2006 estimated population was a mere 395,012. Surprisingly, Sochi beat out the more familiar Pyeongchang, South Korea and Salzburg, Austria despite not having any world-class level athletic facilities as recently as 2008. The Russian Federation certainly has its work cut out for it and the $12 billion investment package might be just the beginning of what is necessary to create Olympic-caliber venues. Only time will tell.

For the third time, I’ve finished J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And just like the previous two times, it was an excellent read and journey. As with the first three books that I’ve recently re-read, even more details have been made clear to me and even more foreshadowing has become evident to me that I didn’t recognize previously.

A great example of a bit of foreshadowing that I missed the previous two times, particularly because it specifically related to events that took place in Book 7 (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and this is the first time that I’ve read Book 4 after having read Book 7, is the following event that took place towards the end of Book 4:

“He said my blood would make him stronger than if he’d used someone else’s,” Harry told Dumbledore. “He said the protection my — my mother left in me — he’d have it too. And he was right — he could touch me without hurting himself, he touched my face.”

For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes. But next second, Harry was sure he had imagined it, for when Dumbledore had returned to his seat behind the desk, he looked as old and weary as Harry had ever seen him.

The inclusion of Harry’s blood in his own becomes a crucial part of the plot near the end of the final book and ultimately begins the final downfall of Lord Voldemort. That Dumbledore had “a gleam of something like triumph” shows that he had an inkling of what Voldemort’s use of Harry’s blood signaled and he was right.

Those five words hold so much weight when viewed in the entirety of the Harry Potter story and yet most, if not all, readers probably had no idea that they meant anything at all the first time they read Goblet of Fire. It’s seemingly insignificant writing like this that turns out to be so enormous that makes the entire Harry Potter series beyond phenomenal.

Next Up: The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped our History
Another small break from the re-reading of the Harry Potter series. I’m going nonfiction because if I wanted fiction, I’d just keep reading Harry Potter.

Yesterday, last night, and today, we were supposed to receive upwards of 8–12 inches of snow as of yesterday morning’s weather forecast.

The snow was supposed to start at 10 am, but looking at the radar, that didn’t seem like it was going to happen, so we went to work and waited for the snow to start. We waited. And we waited. And we waited some more.

By the time 4:30 rolled around, it was time to go home, regardless of snow… or not. The snow did begin falling right around 4:30 and we had a snow-filled drive home, but the roads were perfectly fine, so it was no big deal.

We got home, did the usual stuff, and waited for the snow to show up. By bedtime, the snow was still not falling as promised. In fact, by that time, the forecast had already been updated a second time for the day from 8-12 inches to 3-6 inches, to 1-3 inches.

When we woke up this morning, there was about 2 inches of new snow on the ground, but the worst part was the roads. Apparently, the high winds were causing a lot of drifting snow from this past weekend’s storm to cover more than the actual falling snow did. With that, road conditions were pretty bad, so we stayed home.

One of the smallest snowfalls we’ve had this year and yet it kept us home when other, more intense snowfalls didn’t.

A time-lapse of the One Foot of snow that fell on our area this past weekend.

There’s a 100% chance of snow tomorrow and tomorrow night.

With each update to the forecast, the predicted accumulation grows. The latest forecast has us at 5 to 9 inches of snow just for Tuesday. The snow is supposed to continue until approximately noon on Wednesday, though no accumulation forecast exists for that far out.

The Winter Storm Warning says a total of 5 to 10 inches of snow, but it seems we may end up with more than that if the storm does hang around until mid-Wednesday. With most of the snow we got this past weekend still on the ground, we could end up with a total of two feet on the ground, much like it was after the mid-December storm.

No matter what, it seems like we will once again escape the brunt of the storm as the DC area is predicted to get 10 to 20 inches of snow. With one city in Maryland reporting 40 inches of snow from this past weekend’s storm, this latest storm could cause massive issues for that area.

Despite the predictions for the imminent doom of our area, we “only” had 12 inches of snow from the most recent storm. The D.C. and Baltimore areas got pummeled, but we were mostly spared. Albemarle County has a lot of customers without power due to the increased amounts of ice and wet snow that brought down trees and power lines, but Augusta County mostly seems to have survived just fine.

Now we have another storm on the way for Tuesday, though the forecasters are still unsure of the severity. Given how this last storm went, they’ll probably predict just a couple of inches and we’ll end up with a couple of feet of snow. Only time will tell…

It’s already been an extraordinary Winter for snowfall and now there’s more on the way. The snow season started with an 8-inch snowfall that’s typically a lot for our area. Soon thereafter, we got a big sign of things to come with 29 inches of snow a week before Christmas. That snowfall shattered previous records for snow in December and stayed on the ground well into the new year. But, before the new year was able to come, another round of snow and ice hit the area on Christmas Day.

We’re well into 2010 and the snow has not stopped. We usually get a couple of small snowfalls of 1-2 inches and maybe one “large” snowfall of about 6 inches. That’s it. But after the 37+ inches in December, we had a couple of small 1-2 inch snowfalls before an 8+ inch snowfall just last weekend. Then, on Tuesday night, we got another 3-4 inches of snow. All told, we’ve probably only had one or two days since mid-December where we could actually see the ground.

As if the snow we’ve already had wasn’t enough, there is now a major storm system heading our way. The snow is supposed to start by daybreak tomorrow and won’t stop until sometime Saturday. The official Winter Storm Warning is predicting “storm total accumulations of 20 to 28 inches [of snow].” Locally, the predictions are 7 to 11 inches of snow tomorrow and 10 to 14 inches of snow tomorrow night. That’s 17 to 25 inches, with no prediction yet made for Saturday. We could quickly and easily get into the 2-1/2 foot (or higher!) range.

In anticipation of the impending snow storm, U.Va. has already closed for tomorrow. Usually, U.Va. doesn’t close for snow and their closing for the December storm was the first time I can recall that they’ve closed in the 10+ years I’ve lived in Virginia. Closing preemptively is something I’ve never seen them do.

With temperatures staying below freezing for quite some time, this snow will stay on the ground for a long time, just like the December storm’s snow. In addition, there are already forecasts of snow on Monday and/or Tuesday.

So, I ask the question again. When did we move to Minnesota?

“I love to sing” or “I love to snog”? Even better, “I live to snog?”

Stephen J. Dubner’s Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper is an interesting look into a man’s journey to track down his childhood hero and the resulting revelations.

At an early age, Dubner lost his father. Soon thereafter, he fell in love with Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris and began having a dream that involved himself and Harris playing football in the front yard. Dubner had the dream every night for quite some time until he grew up and moved on to college.

Now a grown man, Dubner takes a look at his hero-worship and contacts Harris about an interview for a book Dubner’s writing. He gets the interview and what ensues is a candid look into both sides of hero-worship and Dubner gets most of his answers from an unlikely source: himself.

Next Up: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
I’m finally able to pick up the Harry Potter series again. This will be the third time I’ve read The Goblet of Fire and I will once again be interested in how many previously unnoticed references I pick up on now that I’ve read the entire series.

Two weeks ago, we got about 8 inches of snow. That’s typically a lot of snow for our area and is in line for our yearly “big snow.” Little did we know that the actual “big snow” was still to come.

As of right now, we have 29 inches of snow in Stuarts Draft. The previous records for a December snowfall in the area were somewhere in the 14 to 16 inch range. Despite the snow starting at 3:00 yesterday, most areas were well beyond that record by noon today.

We measured the snow on our deck and had 13 inches at 1:00 am. By the time 7:00 am came around we had 20 inches of snow. It was up to 22 inches by 9:00 and continued to snow all day.

Looking at the traffic cams, the road conditions are horrible and there are plenty of “parking lots” on Interstate-81. At one point earlier in the day we could see people walking along the interstate because they had been parked for so long.

While I managed to shovel out an area of snow on the driveway so that our car can get out if they plow the road, there’s still over 2 feet of snow on the road because the plows haven’t come to our area yet. In fact, we’re figuring there aren’t many snow plows out there at the moment considering the road conditions, number of stranded vehicles clogging the roads, and the continuation of the snow.

We’re actually starting to wonder if we’ll be able to get out of our driveway by Monday morning. We’ll see…