5-10 inches of rain-beaten snow on the ground
40 degrees
S winds gusting over thirty knots

So, I still haven't taken down the tree. I was tired when I got home yesterday and for some reason it was vitally important to Denny that we free the extension cord (that runs to the outside tree lights) from the snow pack. So we did that and then I crashed for an hour or so before rousing myself enough to make dinner--salad and reheated turkey soup.

Channel 2 (NBC) had been showing a lot of signal trouble all day which (predictably) got much worse as time for "Criminal Intent" approached. I ended up recording the show but haven't watched the tape yet--the signal was prone to flickering and static, so Denny and I watched "True Lies" on Fox while I recorded CI.

Sometime before I woke up this morning (4:30--ugh!) we lost TV entirely. In an effort to fill the void and keep us awake between the alarm clock going off and the caffeine to kicking in, I turned on KBBI. Except it wasn't KBBI, it was some British-accented speaker rambling on in a language that appeared to be English but was incomprehensible--English words were strung together in a way that made no sense to our ears.

Denny and I looked at each other in puzzlement, then realized that the speaker was describing a cricket match. That's when we both burst out laughing. Bill Bryson recounts a similar experience in his book In A Sunburned Country. I suppose a Briton or Aussie listening to a play-by-play of a football (American football) game might have the same sense of dislocation.

***

It's JRR Tolkien's birthday.

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