Snow!

Well, theoretical snow at least. I just heard a weather report about the next cold front that's coming through southeast Texas in the next 36 hours, and they actually mentioned the dreaded "S" word.

Now I have lived in a number of places where snow was something of an anomaly, at least in any real amount, and it's been pretty entertaining to someone who did not get a snow day from sixth grade through high school graduation (and that's not because it didn't snow). Flashback to January 1996, driving from Boston back to grad school in DC one day after a blizzard dumped almost two feet of snow all the way down the eastern seaboard. Roads were dry and perfect until the Mason-Dixon line, at which point a sudden salt famine set in, and pinko commies apparently had stolen every snow plow in a 500 mile radius because Rt. 95 was glare ice and my street in Arlington, VA didn't get plowed for two weeks. Ehem.

Or the lovely afternoon I got to ride my bike to the pool at U of AZ through the wet slushy snowflakes the size of quarters. It didn't stick mind you, but it snowed in Tucson. Very exciting (the mountains around Tucson get plenty of snow in the winter, but it doesn't happen in town very often).

But Houston kind of takes the cake. It has "snowed" here once in the five years we've lived here - Christmas Eve 2004. Ironman and I went outside and danced around in the small white pellets falling from the sky. I took pictures of snow piled up in the cups of the philodendron leaves, and tried for arty shots of "snowflakes" falling. It was pretty neat, but like Tucson, not around for the duration (although Victoria, TX, southwest of Houston, got almost a foot, and the paper the next day had a front page picture of a snowman someone built on the beach in Galveston). It was pretty entertaining, but more so was the fact that the "snowstorm" was all anyone talked about for days afterwards.

And now, in March for god's sake, they're saying it might snow. All I know is that I'm going to be eagerly watching to see what kind of precautions my neighbors take. Stocking up on firewood*, clearing out the milk and bread at the grocery store^? In preparation for the imminent freeze, here is (finally) a picture of some warm, cozy, size 11.5 Trekking XXL socks to keep us from succumbing to the elements.

Dad's Christmas socks, actually on Dad

* for "firewood", read "gas" for the gas fires that most people have. Hell, even we have a gas log in our fireplace - it gives Ironman (who grew up in a house that was at least, in part, heated by firewood) a huge kick to say "Well, I guess it's time to turn off the fire" on one of the five days a year we use it.
^ because, you know, we might get snowed in! (Note: this is my pet peeve held over from living in the DC metro area for 5+ years. Every time snow was forecast, I could guarantee that the grocery stores would be a) packed to the gills and b) cleaned out of staples within four hours of the forecast.)