It's Beginning To -- Oh, Never Mind.
Lassiter: I hate snow globes.
Shawn: Huh. That's strange, because my psychic sense told me specifically that snow globes didn't give you nightmares of being trapped in a clear ball with snow that burned your skin off.
Perhaps we didn't get the eighteen inches of snow that Minneapolis did (if you're either anti-Vikings or just pro-humans-failing-against-physics, check out the Metrodome roof video), but yesterday's snowfall and accompanying wind was enough to close the interstate for a few hours and strand us at home for most of the day.
Today, it looks a lot more like December. December in eastern South Dakota, that is: eight inches of snowfall = five foot drifts + large grassy spots.
Lovely.
The strandedness of yesterday wasn't such a bad thing, at least for me. I wasn't in much of a mood to move. At all.
Let me tell you a story.
On Friday morning, I woke up at Storm. Within a couple of hours, I was on the road, with a stop at the ranch to pick up my grandparents' dead computer so that Mom's tech guy can hopefully rescue some files.
Too much boring detail. Sorry.
I got back in time to eat dinner and clean myself up before we headed to the symphony.
The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra is a) pretty darn good, and b) locally famous for their holiday show. This year's performance was a "collage" -- that is, they jumped from one song to another without any actual breaks in between. More impressively, this involved the symphony itself, the chorus, a couple of solo performers, and a six-piece a cappella group. (The conductor described it as "putting your iPod on shuffle.") The transitions were seamless, the songs were frequently amusing as all get-out (their version of "12 Days of Christmas" had each day performed in a different style, from something like a Gregorian chant to John Philip Sousa, and the a cappella group did "Rudolph" as a doo-wop), and overall it was virtually impossible to leave unimpressed.
Unfortunately for me, there was an incident after.
In October, while taking the last load of stuff to my parents' truck, I had an run-in with wet leaves on a not-quite-actually-there curb and twisted my ankle in such a way that I had it wrapped for a week. I've tweaked it a couple of times since then.
A similar event occurred on Friday night as we were leaving. At the time, I was trying to put on my coat, talking to my mother (who was a step behind me), and walking down some slightly-wider-than-usual stairs -- that is to say, I was paying no attention to my surroundings. Which directly led to me stepping half-sideways and tweaking my ankle again.
In the stumble that followed, I topped down the remaining five or six steps. Somehow -- somehow -- no one else was taken down with me, and I managed to land without permanently damaging anything. The gasps of horror from the people around me were almost amusing enough to make me laugh, if I had been able to breathe.
Note: I said no permanent damage. My ankle was ultimately okay and I was rather miraculously unbroken. I didn't hit my head, mess up my neck, or break/sprain a wrist trying to catch myself. I did, however, get the wind knocked out of me and I'm pretty bruised up. (Or I'm achy, anyway. I didn't bruise as much as I should have.) I managed to pull myself upright well enough to get up onto a bench within thirty seconds and croak out an "I'll be fine" to the people that asked. I also scared the dickens out of a security guard and at least one rather well-dressed couple, aside from said gasps of horror.
And, of course, I completely destroyed my ego. Shattered it into a million pieces. There are still shards of it stuck in the carpet at the bottom of those dang stairs.
Once my ego recovers, I think I'll be feeling much more Christmasy. Although given the likelihood of full recovery, I may have to settle for a vague butterfly-in-my-stomach feeling after a couple of gingerbread cookies and a cup of eggnog.
Shawn: Huh. That's strange, because my psychic sense told me specifically that snow globes didn't give you nightmares of being trapped in a clear ball with snow that burned your skin off.
Perhaps we didn't get the eighteen inches of snow that Minneapolis did (if you're either anti-Vikings or just pro-humans-failing-against-physics, check out the Metrodome roof video), but yesterday's snowfall and accompanying wind was enough to close the interstate for a few hours and strand us at home for most of the day.
Today, it looks a lot more like December. December in eastern South Dakota, that is: eight inches of snowfall = five foot drifts + large grassy spots.
Lovely.
The strandedness of yesterday wasn't such a bad thing, at least for me. I wasn't in much of a mood to move. At all.
Let me tell you a story.
On Friday morning, I woke up at Storm. Within a couple of hours, I was on the road, with a stop at the ranch to pick up my grandparents' dead computer so that Mom's tech guy can hopefully rescue some files.
Too much boring detail. Sorry.
I got back in time to eat dinner and clean myself up before we headed to the symphony.
The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra is a) pretty darn good, and b) locally famous for their holiday show. This year's performance was a "collage" -- that is, they jumped from one song to another without any actual breaks in between. More impressively, this involved the symphony itself, the chorus, a couple of solo performers, and a six-piece a cappella group. (The conductor described it as "putting your iPod on shuffle.") The transitions were seamless, the songs were frequently amusing as all get-out (their version of "12 Days of Christmas" had each day performed in a different style, from something like a Gregorian chant to John Philip Sousa, and the a cappella group did "Rudolph" as a doo-wop), and overall it was virtually impossible to leave unimpressed.
Unfortunately for me, there was an incident after.
In October, while taking the last load of stuff to my parents' truck, I had an run-in with wet leaves on a not-quite-actually-there curb and twisted my ankle in such a way that I had it wrapped for a week. I've tweaked it a couple of times since then.
A similar event occurred on Friday night as we were leaving. At the time, I was trying to put on my coat, talking to my mother (who was a step behind me), and walking down some slightly-wider-than-usual stairs -- that is to say, I was paying no attention to my surroundings. Which directly led to me stepping half-sideways and tweaking my ankle again.
In the stumble that followed, I topped down the remaining five or six steps. Somehow -- somehow -- no one else was taken down with me, and I managed to land without permanently damaging anything. The gasps of horror from the people around me were almost amusing enough to make me laugh, if I had been able to breathe.
Note: I said no permanent damage. My ankle was ultimately okay and I was rather miraculously unbroken. I didn't hit my head, mess up my neck, or break/sprain a wrist trying to catch myself. I did, however, get the wind knocked out of me and I'm pretty bruised up. (Or I'm achy, anyway. I didn't bruise as much as I should have.) I managed to pull myself upright well enough to get up onto a bench within thirty seconds and croak out an "I'll be fine" to the people that asked. I also scared the dickens out of a security guard and at least one rather well-dressed couple, aside from said gasps of horror.
And, of course, I completely destroyed my ego. Shattered it into a million pieces. There are still shards of it stuck in the carpet at the bottom of those dang stairs.
Once my ego recovers, I think I'll be feeling much more Christmasy. Although given the likelihood of full recovery, I may have to settle for a vague butterfly-in-my-stomach feeling after a couple of gingerbread cookies and a cup of eggnog.
Comments
Hope you feel better soon.
Lee