blizzardry

On my way home from work late Thursday night I stopped at the local supermarket, bread and bananas were already wiped clean from the store shelves.  During my 3pm coffee stop at 7 Eleven on Friday I miraculously came across the one last Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon loaf that fav bud likes (see bottom right in fridge).  Combine that accomplishment with 3 half gallon containers of milk to ward off any throwback reminder to the powdered milk my mother served during the famous 1969 milk trucks can’t deliver through unplowed streets crisis and I feel whole.

 

At 6pm yesterday, as I was readying to leave my office, the forecast was for 12 to 18 inches of snow for much of the NYC area.  Feeding my no food left behind anxiety I made another stop to the supermarket as my distress level increases if I have to ration my fruit and cereal portions.

Around noon today as the blizzard conditions began to kick up a notch I walked the ¼ mile to Stop and Shop.  This time I had a craving for liverwurst and blueberry pie—plus I validated my trek by picking up a large jug of the calcium chloride blend of Ice Melt.  Stumbling over snow mounds on the way back caused me to cross paths with a genuine rain, snow, sleet or hail postal carrier.  I was very impressed.  He was very soggy and it made me think about how low tech it is to be delivering mail in 2016.

High tech doesn’t always mean wonderful though.  As I shook the snow off my NY Jets hat and placed my boots by the front door, the TV that I left on featured a team of meteorologists explaining all the snow bands that would now drop 30 inches of winter white across much of the area.  I love how they never talk about what their predictions were less than 24 hours ago.  Instead they contort their bodies over the radar screen and wrap hands counter clockwise over Manhattan detailing how the storm pivots back westerly to keep it from moving away and thus steadily pounds the region with precipitation. 
 
All has not been lost though.  I’ve kept myself occupied with catching up on laundry, fixing the hanging lamp I accidentally damaged a few days ago, and I completed a Swiffer tour of my place and then vacuumed. 

With all this extra time afforded by Mother Nature and the travel ban on our roads I tested my brain to see if I could remember the password to the dashboard of my once in a blue moon post upon a blog page.

Certainly there is much to reflect on: movies, books, sports, politics.

I saw The Big Short.  I enjoyed it mostly for the attempt at a quasi-documentary/drama style of presentation.  In the end though the story is pretty simple.  A small group of opportunists masquerading as prognosticators kept themselves afloat in the shark infested waters surrounding Wall Street during the run up to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.  The opportunists won big (Powerball type big).  Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy.  Bear Stearns melted down into the hands of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in whiplash time.  And the U.S. Government came to the rescue so that only a large minority of people had to walk away from their homes or file for loan modification plans.

Star Wars was different for me.  Fav bud and his friend loved it…5 star like.  I thought it was an okay trip down memory lane…not much else.  I did enjoy seeing the Millennium Falcon fly again.

I’m rooting for the Broncos over the Patriots and the Cardinals over the Panthers.  I don’t think either one of my teams will win though and my bigger than powdered milk fear is that Tom Brady and the Patriots will win it all again on Super Bowl Sunday.

Global warming is not the biggest threat to the world.  The apex of dysfunction in American politics and the dismal field of 2016 Presidential candidate hopefuls is scarier to me.  If Michael Bloomberg, billionaire philanthropist and former Mayor of NYC, decides to run as an Independent I will cast my vote for him.  I’m not sure who he would take more votes away from whether it be Trump, Sanders or Clinton but I would have to vote my conscious for who I think would be the best person to step up.

Tomorrow will be dedicated to shovels, sleds and downhill runs.

Stay safe and warm.  Peace.

…..And just realizing I’ve had 101 blue moons.

© 2016 Christopher’s Views