Fred and Valerie

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…

Steff Deschenes’s self-published book “The Ice Cream Theory” was a fun read and provides an interesting way to look at ice cream. Steff sent the book to me on behalf of Two Dips and I did a book review for the site.

Next Up: Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper by Stephen J. Dubner
Instead of returning to my re-read of the Harry Potter series, I’m reading Dubner’s book about hero-worshiping because Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was just too big to fit into the suitcase for our trip. I became a fan of Dubner after reading Freakonomics, the book he co-authored with Steven D. Levitt.

Beyond true!

We took a quick weekend trip to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia for Labor Day. In addition to the 129 photos I posted, I also took two panoramics of Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. where we saw the Washington Nationals take on the Florida Marlins.

• Nationals Park from Left Field
• Nationals Park from Third Base (our seats)

Just like the re-read of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, taking another trip through the Chamber of Secrets revealed a lot of “secrets” that now have much more meaning to the overall series.

Next Up: The Ice Cream Theory by Steff Deschenes
I’m having to take a break from the re-reading of the Harry Potter series as Ms. Deschenes was kind enough to send me a copy of her book because of Two Dips. I’m going to do a book review and then will pick up the Harry Potter series again.

Wow! Even though I had read J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone twice before, there were still details I read this time that I missed the first two times. It’s not that I’m a bad reader, it’s that Rowling is a phenomenal writer. She writes details into the book that seem like generic text about the setting or character, but after having read all seven books in the series you realize that she set it all up for you right there in Book 1 at a high level of detail.

There is no doubt, after reading Book 1 for the third time, that J. K. Rowling is not only a great writer, but she also clearly had a high level of knowledge of where the entire series was heading before she ever put pen to paper.

Next Up: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Like Book 1, this will be the third time I’ve read Chamber of Secrets and I’m looking forward to all the new details I’ll pick up on this time around like I did with Book 1.