Where I’ve Been

Snowed under, mostly.

Well, not quite in the literal sense; the driveway and the front door never actually became impassable, though the town snowplows were admirably zealous in replacing the ridge of snow at the foot of the driveway on a regular basis. Nevertheless, February was a bitterly cold and snowy month, with only a couple of days when the temperature outside even drew near 32°F, and so far March has only taken us above freezing for a couple of afternoons – not enough to melt all the snow by a long shot, and the weather forecast for the next week is calling for more snow and daytime temps somewhere in the twenties.

The cold winter, with the thermometer occasionally swinging from twenty below to twenty above in the same 24-hour period, has also played merry hell with our plumbing.  A word to those contemplating a move to deep snow country:  PVC pipes do not cope well with conditions of extreme cold, and their natural lifespan is greatly shortened on that account.  Pipes all over town have been freezing and breaking and springing leaks, and the local plumbers have all the business they can handle.

All of this is a long way around to explaining why I haven’t posted for a while.  I’ve got a post on commas in the works; meanwhile, have a couple of amusing or at least interesting links:

If you’re writing a fantasy novel and one or more entries on this list make you cringe, you may need to rethink a few things.

Also, a blog post on the origins of “okay”.  (Personal position statement here:  I’ve always favored the Cherokee and/or African loan-word theory, and think that the “Orll Korrect” and “Old Kinderhook” etymologies are a bunch of hooey.)

And finally, a tale of modern-day cattle-rustling in the Texas Panhandle.