Damn, it got cold out. I don’t think it hit 20° yesterday, and they’re predicting a high of 4° on Friday, with a low temp of -10° on Saturday morning. That’s just too darn cold – Minnesota cold. Our deal here is supposed to be snow, not cold, damnit. Fortunately I don’t actually have to leave the house again until next Wednesday (though I’m certain to run out of beer long before that). I should be all set for the big festivities tonight, though. Especially since, as far as I know, we’re not actually doing anything (certainly not going out anywhere – I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a bar or a party or something on New Year’s Eve, though even if I could remember I probably wouldn’t remember much). I do recall going over to visit my in-laws at the turn of the millennium (I think we were there to watch them see the new year in in Australia, which is like 2 PM or something here). It happens to be their anniversary as well. Married for like a hundred years now or something (OK, only 66).

In the past we’ve always sat around and watched the Twilight Zone Marathon (which starts at 8:00 EST this morning), but that’s finally gotten kind of played out. I mean, in an era when you can watch pretty much any show (especially the “classics”) any time you want, there isn’t much incentive to sit and watch three days worth of one show. Then we’d sit around drinking beer (or wine) while chowing down on unhealthy food like pizza rolls and chicken wings and fired mushrooms and other stuff that enhances the following day’s hangover until just about midnight, when we’d switch over to ABC to watch Dick Clark count down to the new year.

But Dick’s dead for, what, a couple of years now, and this may be the first year when I don’t even make an effort to stay up ’til midnight. I barely managed last year, and that required a nap at around eight o’clock just to get up, watch the ball drop, and then go back to bed. Must be I’m officially old now. But we’ll see how it goes – maybe I’ll find a second wind.

A lot of people died in 2013. But then a lot of people die every year, and I expect a lot of people will die next year, too. I’m not going to run through all of them, but there were some big names and some of my favorite people. Mandela, Lou Reed, Jonathan Winters, Ray Manzarek, James Gandolfini, Jean Stapleton, Paul Deen’s career…. And the list goes on. But at least I’m not on it (yet).

I guess all these dead people might explain why the US population growth is the lowest it’s been since the Great Depression. Some people blame the economy (Mexicans are running south, and people are deciding to put off breeding until they find a job). Me? I blame gay marriage.

The “experts” apparently see this slowdown in population growth (and, let’s be clear, the population is still increasing – just at a slower rate) as a bad thing. Really, ‘cuz I sure don’t. There are way too many people in this country if you ask me. We could do with less traffic on the streets and fewer people standing in the middle of the aisles at the grocery store gawking at cans of peas (I know I’ve said this before, but Jeezus frickin’ Christ, it’s peas – there’s no reason to study the label like you’re gonna be quizzed at checkout).

Oh well whatever you do tonight – go out, stay home and pass the puffer fish around, or see what you can do to increase population growth – stay safe, have a happy end to this year, and a great start to 2014.

Phase One of operation “Take My Mind Off of Having to Go to Work on Monday” is complete as SU left great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts all over the Reliant Stadium turf last night, and a good time was had by all. Next up, Phase Two as the #8 Villanova Wildcats come to town for a 2:00 game this afternoon. Hopefully Syracuse will not stink the place up. The outcome means either a leisurely Sunday doing laundry, watching football, reading all the sports coverage I can find online and more or less not thinking about work on Monday, or a day of doing laundry while sulking, avoiding ESPN and every other sports outlet, and brooding over not having been wise enough to take Monday off.

I am also on Day Two (or maybe it’s more like Day 1.5, since I didn’t start until late in the day yesterday) of trying the Apple Cider Vinegar Arthritis/Gout/High BP/Diabetes/High Cholesterol/You Name It home remedy. Seriously, there are folks out there who claim it will cure damn near everything, and you can use it in just about every way imaginable – internally, topically, in a poultice – hell you can probably find people who use it in enemas. I’m going with ingesting it, and let me tell you there’s no finer way to start you morning than with a hot cup of vinegar. Yummy. Actually, it’s not that bad. A couple teaspoons of it in a cup of water with some honey. Nuke it for a couple of minutes and drink it like tea.

So far, I’d like to think it’s helping, but of course that could just be the placebo effect, so we’ll see. I remain cautiously optimistic that this will provide long-term relief from everything that ails me. Maybe I’ll even start making it myself (though I’d probably wind up drinking it while it’s still in the “hard cider” phase. Goodness knows, I live in the land-o-apples.

I normally try to avoid clicking on most of the links at the Huff Post, ‘cuz they’re usually pretty stupid and are just click bait (trying to get you to click on links to increase page views and earn themselves more money). You know, stuff like “Obama Slams Limbaugh in Epic Rant” and the story turns out to quote Obama as responding to a question about Rush Limbaugh saying something stupid and offensive with “I think that, us, those of us in the, uh, public eye, both in politics and you folks in the uh media should all be very careful about the um rhetoric we use.”

Or “Is a Killer Asteroid Coming in 2015?” And the answer turns out to be, “no.”

But sometimes I just can’t help myself, and when I saw “11 ‘Girly’ Things Men Wish They Could Do Without Judgment” I figured, OK, let’s see what girly things I would like to be doing. I have to disagree with most of these.

1. Have more stylish clothing options.

No, can’t say as I do. I try to buy everything exactly the same so I don’t have to try to figure out what to wear. Give me a baggy shirt, baggy pants, and comfortable shoes and I would be happy to wear the same thing every day to work. At home, sweats when it’s cold, shorts when it’s hot.

2. Be able to talk about other men being attractive.

If I found men attractive I wouldn’t have a problem saying so. I reckon, say, Don Draper is a good-looking guy but he doesn’t really do anything for me. And who exactly would I talk about that kinda stuff with? “Gee, honey, that Brad Pitt is one hot guy. Sure makes me look like a fat old pig, doesn’t he?”

3. Order “girly drinks.”

I like beer. In a frosted mug, if possible. No umbrellas and no sweet shit in it.

4. Get treated to a spa day.

Not really sure what that would involve. If they have beer, then I’m in. And an Epsom salts foot bath would be good. I could probably go for a massage, too. Just not by a guy, if it’s all the same to you. I’d really just as soon not have a guy lubing me up and rubbing me all over. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Actually, you know, it’d probably be best to skip the massage altogether, not that I think about it. It might not have a happy ending. Otherwise, I don’t especially want a mud pack on my face and papaya slices on my eyes or whatever else they do at those places (though if it’s free, what the hell I guess). Especially if there’s beer.

5. Carry a purse.

I’ve always prided myself on being able to carry everything I need in my pockets – wallet, keys, phone…. What else is there? Shit, I’m lucky if I can find my keys when they’re in my pocket – if I ever had to dig through a purse, I’d never get anywhere (plus I’d lose the purse). I do take a backpack to work, if that counts. Lunch, Tablet, portable hard drive, pens, paper, etc. Plus you never know when you might need to bring your work home with you, if you know what I mean. Maybe an insulated purse to carry beer in.

6. Dance like no one’s watching.

Don’t care whether anybody’s watching or not – I aint dancing. I dance in my head. Unless I drink too much, but I don’t think that’s dancing as much as it is “staggering.”

7. Wear makeup.

Now that’s just plain stupid. Why in god’s name would anybody want to wear makeup. I mean unless you’re gonna be on teevee or something. Then I can’t actually see wanting to wear it. You just don’t want to look like a shiny cadaver. Lipstick, mascara, blush, eyeliner – never understood any of that, and I’ve never met a woman who needs it. You either look good enough the way you are or no amount of makeup is gonna help anyway. Get a sack and cut a couple of eye holes in it.

8. Get pampered by women.

This is girly? Well then I’m more than happy to embrace my feminine side. Feel free to commence the pampering, ladies (and grab me a beer)!

9. Wear yoga pants.

If these are like sweats, then I’m in.

10. Have fun with one’s children without being judged.

I don’t actually have any children, but I have no problem having fun with my dogs, and I don’t give a shit who cares. So I assume it would be the same with kids (maybe even more so). And, like, who judges some guy having fun with his kids? “Look at that guy over there playing with his children! Disgusting!” I just don’t see it. Unless maybe you’re playing with somebody else’s kids (you should probably ask first).

11. Be able to show emotion without being labeled as gay or a “p*ssy.”

I assume this refers to “sad” emotions, since I don’t have a problem with laughing and being happy or “in love” or stuff (I mean, there’s obviously a time and place for everything). I will admit that I grew up in an era of “big boys don’t cry,” so I try to remain relatively stoic when bad shit happens – at least in public. It isn’t about being labeled as anything, though. I’m old enough now to not give a shit what people think. It’s more about being a private person.

Oh well, time to get back to drinking coffee.

Today is the day college football fans have been waiting for, for what seems like months. Yes, it’s the day the National Championship gets decided at Reliant Stadium in Houston. OK, well, maybe not the NC exactly, but it’s the day when the mediocre 8-4 Minnesota Golden Gophers take on the even more mediocre (mediocre-er?) 6-6 Syracuse Orangemen. You can tell this is an important game because they put it on Friday at 6:00 Eastern Time, hoping that the all-important Happy Hour crowd will accidentally catch part of the game (maybe you folks out west can see the fourth quarter if you’ve got nothing better going on).

There are a lot of bragging rights at stake for me, as my stepdaughter and her husband are both UM grads and two more of the kids live in Minnesota. And I’m sure if any of them were actually aware that this game was taking place today, they might care. Maybe.

I’m not sure if I’ll live to see the game, unfortunately. I was feeling pretty good earlier this morning, but now that I found out I’ve been OD’ing on baking soda, I’m not doing so well. At first I thought it was no big deal except for some extra sodium, but when I jokingly mentioned it to my wife she said “oh my god, do you feel OK? Nobody takes that much of something like that!” So now I’m feeling kinda “funny” and am not sure how ling I’ve got. Even starting to get heart palpitations. I wish I’d read Sue’s comment before I took my morning dose.

You hear that Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to join ya, honey! (Those of you under age 50 will have to ask your parents what that means.)

I only hope that my demise will teach the world two valuable lessons. First, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. And second, reading comprehension is very important (I swear I thought it said tablespoon, damnit). If only they’d taught to the test when I was in school.

In my defense, I have to ask the question: what kind of stupid measurements are teaspoons and tablespoons, anyway? I mean, come on – does that sound scientific to anybody? Why not just go with a dash, pinch or smidgen, fer chrissakes?

Speaking of something completely different, I get this e-mail every week from something called Quora. I have no idea how I got on this list are even really what it is, but it has something to do with stupid people (for instance, those who don’t know the difference between a tsp and a tbs) asking questions and smart people answering them. One today was “why is water transparent?”

I was expecting some kind of scientific explanation about how water doesn’t absorb too much electromagnetic radiation of the type where the wavelength is in the range of visible light (Roy G Biv), so most of it passes through (at least if it’s not too deep). And there is an answer or two along those lines, but the #1 answer (and most interesting to me) was from a Theoretical Biologist at MIT.

His answer was that water is transparent to us because life evolved in water. So some blind little critter out there mutated and developed receptors that could detect differences in that “visible” radiation, and therefore had a survival advantage over the other blind critters (and either ate them, or avoided being eaten by them) and passed those gene mutations along. Had live evolved in, say, mercury, then we’d be able to see through mercury right about now. I thought this was interesting, not because of the explanation (which is relatively simple), but in the way the guy who answered it defined the word “why.”

Of course, it’s a totally un-Christian response involving evolution, so I categorically dismiss it.

Oh well, on the odd chance I don’t keel over from baking soda poisoning, I guess I’d better get back to work.

Another Christmas in the books. I hope y’all had a nice day. My wife gave me the opportunity to opt out of visiting the in-laws, but being the magnanimous guy I am, I decided to pull on a pair of shoes (doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a painful process at the moment) and go along. It was only for pound cake, pumpkin pie, and water (I declined my mother-in-law’s rather insistent – incessant, even – offers to dump rum on the cake; not only was I driving, but I don’t really like rum). Other than my father-in-law becoming somewhat morose, it was a fairly painless experience).

I’m sitting here at work right now (Wednesday has to be the all-time crappiest day of the week to have x-mas on) and even though I’m not really one of these Christmas-type people (never was the same after my dad died, and once my mom was gone I pretty much lost all interest), I can’t think of anything more depressing than working on the day after Christmas. Fortunately, I think the rest of the world is off today, so hopefully everybody will leave me the hell alone.

At least I’m not hung over this morning. Now that I’ve read that beer is particularly bad for gout (which is the diagnosis I’m going with for my foot), I suppose I need to quit drinking it – at least until my foot stops hurting. All work and no beer makes me a very unhappy boy.

The pain has now mostly moved to about the middle of the outside of my foot. Since there’s no joint there, I’m assuming this is due to the swelling. I read that baking soda is good for neutralizing the uric acid, so I’ve been taking that several times a day. We’ll see how that goes. Of course, the sodium is bad for the high blood pressure so I’m taking magnesium for that and drinking lots of water. I also read that coffee is good (keeps the kidneys flowing), so I’ve upped my intake to two cups a day (depending on what you consider a “cup” – my mug is about 14 oz, so two of those).

Oh well, back to work, I guess.

No matter what color your Santa is, or whether you’re celebrating the birth of baby Jesus, having a pleasant day with friends and/or family, being guilted into visiting the in-laws, or are just happy to have a day off (assuming you don’t work at a hospital or a movie theatre or a 7/11 or something), I hope your day is merry. Around here, the moon isn’t full but it’s very bright, illuminating all the snow on the ground and in the trees (so I guess Santa left Rudolph in the barn last night). It’s also a balmy three degrees (above) out there. It’s quite Norman Rockwell looking.

Oops, spoke too soon. Either clouds just moved in or somebody turned off the moon. The plows appear to be out, so I guess we got some more snow last night (or they’re just salting the hell out of the roads – not that the salt does much when it’s this cold).

Anyhow, whatever it is you’re up to (or not) today, have a good one.

I don’t have to go to work today, but I do have another distasteful task to perform – getting my car inspected. I typically like to let it lapse so that I get an “extra” month out of the deal (kind of 13 months for the price of 12), but now that I’ve gotten it to December the sticker color changes for 2014 so I’d be driving rather obviously with an out of date inspection. Plus I drive a pretty fair distance back and forth to work, and you never know when you’ll pass a gung-ho police officer (it helps if you only drive when the weather is really crappy, but you can’t count on that, even here during the winter). So for once in my life, I’ve decided to be proactive and get it done ahead of time.

As far as I know, everything is OK with the car, but you really never know. I keep trying to tell myself “it’s only money” but for some reason I’m as nervous about this as if I was taking the dogs to the vet (or, worse, if I had to go to the doctor myself). So I didn’t sleep all that well last night (though I did drift off at about 5:00, which is when somebody’s phone alarm went off and I had to get up and find the damn thing and turn it off).

Last night was better than the night before, though. I’ve been having my recurring problems with my feet again. This time it’s my right Achilles tendon and, worse, my left foot in general. The left foot is all kinds of swollen there’s a big old knot on it, and the night before last it felt as if somebody was jabbing my big toe with a knife all night long. Last night it only hurt when I moved it, so that was pretty good, and I can walk around without looking totally ridiculous today, mostly thanks to Ibuprofen and turmeric.

But enough about my toe. Let’s talk weather. They had some nasty ice storms “up north” (something like 30,000 homes without power – which is a pretty significant percentage of the population since there’s not exactly a high density of people up there) and to the west of us, but we just had rain. Lots of rain. The sump “pond” is definitely full. Good thing it wasn’t snow, I guess, or we’d have had a couple feet of it. Right now it’s still about 40° out there, but that’s supposed to change and the cold and snow’s a-comin’. White Santa better wear his long-johns, ‘cuz it’s supposed to be down into the single digits come X-mas morning.

Oh well, I suppose I ought to take a shower and get ready to be inspected. Probably ought to trim my beard, too. I’m starting to look like I should be on Duck Dynasty. Wonder if they need a new guy?

For those of us up here in the Northern Hemisphere, winter arrives at 12:11 PM EST. As such, this is the shortest day of the year. Thank goodness we’ll start gaining sunlight tomorrow, though it always seems to me that it takes a lot longer for it to stay light out noticeably later than it takes for it to start getting darker earlier. But at least we’ll soon turn the corner.

It seems more like spring than winter here, though. It’s already 55° out, and it’s supposed to hit 58° tomorrow. What was a foot of snow on the ground a couple of days ago is now almost totally melted. Not to worry, though, the cold and snow are supposed to be back on Monday.

So, I reckon everybody’s heard about the Duck Dynasty Dude. I’ve never seen the show, though I’ve heard of it because there are some things in life you just can’t ignore no matter how hard you try (see “Cyrus, Miley”) unless you’re totally off the grid. I’m more of a “Billy the Exterminator” fan, myself. Anyhow, from what I can tell this is some kind of a wildly popular show about hillbillies in Louisiana that kill ducks or make shit to kill ducks with or something. I can’t possibly imagine where the entertainment value is in that, but as I said I’ve never seen it so who am I to judge?

Apparently one of these ZZ Top wannabees was interviewed by GQ (which I think used to stand for “Gentleman’s Quarterly” but I reckon must stand for something else if they’ve gotten themselves into the hillbilly interviewin’ bidness) and was asked what he thought was “sinful.”

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.

It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

OK, well, whatever. Probably didn’t need to elaborate on the “vagina as a man” stuff (for some reason when I read that phrase, all I could think of was a vagina disguised as Fidel Castro or something – must be because of all that 1980s porn I used to run as a projectionist). Ignorant, redneck, bible-thumpin’ bullshit, yes. But – as many others have pointed out – when you have a show about a bunch of duck-murdering hillbillies, don’t be surprised when they act like duck-murdering hillbillies. Yeah, he sort of conflates homosexuality with bestiality, but to be fair he also conflates it with adultery (or at least promiscuity).

And, hey, he may be white trash but at least he’s not racist.

Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

Yes’m, back in the olden days before all that civil rights nonsense, them black folks were just a-singin’ and a-laughin’ all the live-long day. And nary a one ever said a bad word about white folks, neither (at least, not when there were white folks around, ‘less they wanted to find themselves swingin’ from the old oak tree).

I hate to disagree with ya though, Phil, but I’ve got some old-time records, and you know what? There were definitely some black folks singing the blues back then.

I think they learnt it from Elvis.

I’m pleased to say that I’m not at work today. In fact, between my work from home days, holidays, and a few strategically placed vacation and furlough days, I only have to go to the office two more times between now and January 8^th which, sadly, marks the return of the useless meetings from hell, proving that our “director” level mucky-muck has very few actual job responsibilities. In fact, it was pointed out that I had failed to attend the office “Holiday Gathering” for two years in a row, proving that he really has way too much time on his hands. No doubt I’ll be interrogated about it when stupid meeting day rolls around. For the time being, however, I’ll try not to think about that. Anyhow, to celebrate my few impending days of freedom, I popped some chicken wings in the oven and settled down in my chair to watch “Rehab Addict” (yes, this is how wild and crazy I am), and then promptly fell asleep.

Fortunately I woke up and turned the oven off before the smoke alarm sounded. Unfortunately, the alarm started blaring shortly thereafter, waking up my wife (who I’m pretty sure hates me now – both for waking her up and also for the fact that I’m off today and she had to go to work). On the bright side, it’s nice to know that the smoke alarm is loud enough to wake her up in the event of an emergency.

The wings were more or less charcoal, but I ate most of them anyway. I’ll be damned if I’ll waste money, and one good thing is that since all the hot sauce was burned off, I’m not feeling any intestinal side effects this morning.

Other than picking blackened chunks of chicken out of my teeth I don’t have much of anything planned for today, though you never know when inspiration will strike. I have a couple of projects in mind, but I need to figure out the logistics in my head and then see if I have enough scrap wood laying around to get the job done (because I sure as hell don’t want to leave the house to go get anything). I think I’ll spend the day reading, since I’ve been neglecting my Kindle lately. I’m also expecting a package delivery, assuming it actually shows up (nothing exciting – just a set of very inexpensive speaker mounts. Five speaker mounts cost less than the very plain black curtain rod I just got. Go figure).

I say “assuming” it shows up, because it was supposed to show up yesterday. In fact it arrived in Syracuse just before midnight on 12/16 and showed a “guaranteed” delivery date of 12/18. Right up until it didn’t show up and then suddenly it was an “estimated” delivery date of 12/19. So much for 2-day delivery, I guess. And the tracking still hasn’t updated to show “out for delivery” or anything, so I’m kind fo wondering if they lost it in the warehouse or something. I’d bitch but it wouldn’t do me any good and I don’t want to get the poor UPS guys in trouble because I assume they’re really humping trying to get all these holiday packages delivered.

When it comes to shipping, I’m starting to wonder what the whole “2 day” thing really means, though. For instance, that curtain rod I mentioned before was shipped from Chicago via USPS “Priority Mail 2-Day”. That was on 12/9 (a Monday). So if we take the day it shipped off the table, you’d expect 2 days to be 12/11, no? Well, the estimated delivery date on the tracking was Thursday, 12/12. OK, close enough (I mean, it’s just a curtain rod, not a replacement liver or something). So on 12/12, it didn’t show up (same estimated delivery date though). Didn’t come on Friday the 13^th or even Saturday (on Sunday, they did change the delivery date to 12/16, which is when it finally arrived).

To me, that’s not two days, and it wouldn’t appear to be much of a priority, either. But, hey, I guess there was some crappy weather in the Midwest and I think the USPS by and large does an amazing job of moving the mail (I mean, they basically touch every single residential and business address every single day, six days a week plus they’re fellow civil servants so I’m not gonna diss them). Try sending a letter FedEx from NY to LA for 46¢ and see what they say.

Oh well, time to go do a scrap wood inventory and see what other trouble I can get myself into.

As it started to brighten up this morning, I could see that, by golly, it must have been snowing all night long. And it doesn’t appear to be slowing down, either. On the bright side, after beginning the day at about three below zero, it’s up to a balmy nine above. Apparently it’s supposed to snow this morning, this afternoon, and this evening. Oh, and tomorrow. It snowed pretty much all day yesterday, too (making for a rather crappy commute in to work – when it’s this cold out, the salt doesn’t really do much good, so where the roads are plowed they’re mostly nice smooth ice-covered by a layer of snow. Fortunately, I didn’t have to drive in to the office today, though my did, and she said things were pretty shitty out there. Yet they say it’ll be in the 40s and raining by the end of the week. Go figure.

As you probably aren’t actually aware of, Syracuse will be playing in the vaunted “Texas Bowl” in Houston on December 27th. Whereas it’s kinda holiday time and airfare to Houston from here is something like $600, not a whole lot of local folks are gonna be making it to the game. So yesterday, a guy who runs a Syracuse sports blog – Sean Keeley – decided to see if he could get people to donate money to buy tickets for poor kids in the Houston area to go to the game. Tickets are $50, and with a voucher for a hot dog and a soda plus (most importantly) an orange t-shirt to wear to the game, it was gonna cost about $60 per kid.

So Sean set a goal of sending 200 kids to the game – roughly $12,000. He hoped they could get close to that goal by the end of this week. By midnight last night, over $18,000 had already been donated, and the Houston Texans dropped the ticket price to $20 for these kids. So there’s already enough to send 500 poor kids to go see a college bowl game in an NFL stadium (and hopefully grow up to be big strong kids that dream of playing for SU some day). The Houston Texans YMCA ran out of kids, so now kids from the Depelchin Children’s Center will be going, too.

Pretty cool, I think.

Oh well, back to work. Stay warm out there.

Well, it’s looking quite Christmasy out my window this morning. The trees are full of snow, the driveway is full of snow – everything looks bright and shiny. Well, not super bright, ‘cuz the sun’s not out, but it looks like the snow is mostly over (and I can see a brightening sky off to the west – not sun, mind you, but brighter clouds). And it’s already a lot warmer this morning than it ever got yesterday, so that’s good.

It’s hard to tell how much we got without actually going out there and walking around in it. Maybe 8 inches. Maybe 10. Less than a foot, anyway, which is my official standard for determining whether it’s just a little snow, or it’s a pain in the ass. So, just a little snow, and I’ll have to get out there and plow the driveway at some point (in the afternoon, after I make sure it’s not gonna snow more – though that’s hard to tell around here. All the wind has to do is switch direction and it can pile up in a hurry).

I’ve been trying a new keyboard app for my tablet – SwiftKey. It’s supposed to be very good at learning what you type and then predicting it for you, plus it has a lot of very nice little features. Unfortunately, I don’t really type all that much on my tablet, so it’s probably not going to be very well-trained by the time my 30-day trial is up. But since it’s only $3.99, I guess it won’t break the bank to buy it. It’s a shame that SwiftKey appears to be Android-only, ‘cuz if there’s a keyboard that needs replacing, it’s the one in my work iPhone. Its version of auto-correct truly blows. I don’t know how the kids bang out text messages and tweets (let alone e-mails, but maybe kids don’t use e-mail except to contact their parents) on these things. I’d say in the future, humans will evolve to have really pointy fingertips, except I’m sure they’ll perfect voice recognition (another area where Android blows iOS away) or a brain interface before that happens.

Turns out Megyn Kelly was “just kidding” when she said Santa Claus is clearly a white dude. I’m not sure I get what the joke was (really didn’t sound like her little panel of Foxists were joking around), but she did seem to admit that the part where Jesus was a white guy is still open to debate. It’s kind of shameful to admit that she not only went to SU but was actually born here (though she moved away when she was 9 – they must have messed her up in Delmar).

Out old pal Frothy Rick Santorum says that government-provided healthcare is just a way to kill off the people who don’t vote the right way. I don’t actually think that’s true – but it’s not a bad idea. I’m not sure how you make sure the right people get denied care and die off, though. Maybe some kind of a questionnaire? Of course, assuming he was bitching about Obamacare, that really isn’t government-provided healthcare. It’s not even government-provided insurance. I’m not really sure what it is, to be honest, other than certain regulations about who can get denied insurance and the extent to which insurance companies can screw people and the requirement that everybody (well, sorta everybody) gets insurance and the feds give really poor people subsidies to get insurance. Oh, and there’s something in there about death panels and killing babies and stuff. But no actual health care that I can see.

Well, I suppose I ought to go out there and tromp around in the snow for a while. The dogs sure seem to be having fun.