They say Floyd County got 14" of snow. It's really hard to tell with all of the blowing and drifting, but I'd guess that my house got closer to 20".

Just thought I'd put up some pics of what I'm trying to deal with here.

This is as far as I got trying to shovel my driveway out from under the multiple layers of snow and ice. Usually one of my neighbors will bring a plow and clear my driveway for me. I'm still hopeful that they'll do it again.

I did, however, manage to shovel a path down my walkway. Because of the drifting the snow here was up to 36" deep.

The prints I left this morning going to the detached garage to get my snow shovel and look at my useless snowblade mower attachment.

My deck always seems to be a magnet for snow.

The snow piled up against my basement door - at the North end of the house.

Multiple Christmas activities are being either cancelled or postponed. One that's still on is that I'm supposed to have a lot of people over tomorrow night. If I don't get that driveway cleared visitors should have a real adventure.

We got about 5" of snow today. Now there's sleet and freezing rain. Supposed to be another 6-10" of snow later tonight.

Pretty damn cool.

We had a brief lull at around 5:00 so I (of course) went to Rich O's and had a beer. Didn't really feel like experimenting so I just had a Great Lakes Christmas Ale.

I guess that's it.

So Rich O's is having this pagan/christmas beer festival yet, because of the unfortunate holiday timimg, they're closed for the next two weekends. I'm a little afraid that I won't get a chance to sample the 35(!) beers scheduled to be on tap over the next couple of weeks.

Accordingly, I went back after work today to cross another beer off my list.

What I had was a St Feuillien Cuvee de Noel - I'd provide a link but their page seems to be broken.

Here's what I thought:

(draft) One of those beers that takes a long time to pour. Once in a glass, the head faded fairly quickly. I detected a strong oak smell until the head had gone, then lots of malt and alcohol with some fruit. The alcohol-bitter aftertaste reminded me strongly of bourbon. I liked this, but I'd recommend it to close out a session instead of beginning one.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here semi-depressed about the holidays. I've never been one of those people, and I'm pretty sure I won't really become one. I'm just a little more aware this year of things that might have been, and things that used to be, and things that almost were, than I've been in recent years.

I do know what I want for Christmas though. About two feet of snow between now and tomorrow morning so I can skip work.

I don't know if I've been good enough to deserve that present though.

False alarm.

That's good, right?

Of course it is.

Stopped by Rich O's after The Day Of Hell at work. Had a Corsendonk Christmas Ale while talking with DooRagGirl's ex-husband, who I suppose needs a new nickname. One that's not so much of a downer.

(draft) Smelled better than it tasted, but it smelled fantastic. Nice and malty with some spice aroma that I couldn't identify. Taste was very similar to the Great Lakes Christmas Ale - if you like that, you'll like this.

With a name like Corsendonk, it has to be good, right?

VigilanteGirl didn't make it to the doctor today. She's supposed to go tomorrow. I find myself concerned, but I am in a pessimistic phase.

My nap, which was supposed to be one hour, turned into a four hour affair, so now it's after midnight and I'm not even close to tired. I should probably try to sleep anyway as I don't expect tomorrow (today!) to be any better at work.

How shortlived memories can be.

I just got off the phone with my sister, who was all excited/nervous about the SNOW that they're predicting for Wednesday.

Apparently she's forgotten the last six winters.

Apparently she's forgotten how, week after week, all of the local stations start hollering "Snow! Snow! Snow!" every time their ratings drop.

They know that this will get people to tune in for the latest forecast, the latest school closings, the latest bullshit.

For me, this all came to a head last Winter, when the forecasts for snow were so persuasive that there were several preemptive school closings.

Before a single flake had fallen.

Then, surprise! it turned out that the forecasts were wrong after all, there was no snow at all.

But tune in tomorrow, as a new system is making its way out of the Rockies. Will we see a white weekend? Find out at 6:00, 11:00, and noon!

I'm not buying their crap anymore.

I like snow. I missed it a lot when I lived in Seattle. I'd like to see it snow.

So I hope I'm wrong, and I hope the professionals are right.

But I'm not counting on it.

Now I don't ever fish, at least not since that time when we were kids and my sister and I caught the same bluegill a dozen times each, but what I understand about it is that after you get a bite, you're supposed to jerk the line.

This is to "set the hook" and make sure that the fish doesn't get away.

Oh, I suppose you still have to worry about the occasional line break, but for the most part once the hook has been set, that fish isn't going anywhere.

The point that I wanted to make here, in keeping with my metaphorical bend, is that I'm already hooked, there's no need to keep jerking that line to make sure I'm still here.

Whether you view this as a catch and release situation or whether I'm going to be dinner, that doesn't really matter to me right now.

What does matter is that I took the bait and now I'm at your mercy.

Just stop jerking the line. It hurts, and it accomplishes nothing.

Coming home from work this morning was sort of interesting.

We've had a little snow, maybe a half-inch, and the idiots are out in full force.

After successfully avoiding the SUVIdiots who think slick roads are irrelevant to them, and the PussIdiots who reduce their speed to a single-digit number at sight of the first flake, I made it to the bottom of the big hill on my road.

My house sits atop that hill, and between me and my house this morning were an estimated 114 cars and trucks strewn about in varying states of crashedness.

So I turned around and went back to the only alternate route available to me - through Edwardsville.

When I got to within a quarter-mile or so of my house I ran into a different problem.

Georgetown's Finest had, upon noticing the 114 cars and trucks strewn about, had decided to park in front of my driveway and block traffic to the hill.

I was stuck in this backup, but I was able to use the (empty) oncoming traffic side of the road to get home.

Notice that I said the trip home was sort of interesting, nothing more than that.

If most of the women I'm attracted to turn out to be secret psychos, and most of the women who are attracted to me turn out to be secret psychos, what exactly does that say about me?

I don't think I'm a psycho, but would a psycho know that they're a psycho?

Saturday night at Rich O's had much less of a madhouse atmosphere. I was actually able to grab a seat on the sofa fairly quickly.

Based on several Friday night recommendations, my first beer was a Gouden Carolus Noel. I liked it, but not as much as I was expecting given the rave reviews.

(draft) Highly recommended by all who'd had it at Rich O's. Definitely a Christmas Ale - all sorts of complex flavors. I thought the fruitiness was a little bit too much but I suppose it was needed to mask all of that alcohol.

Got to meet some of the other ratebeer.com people. I'm pretty horrible with names but there were two cool guys and one hot girl that had made trips of varying length to enjoy Saturnalia.

My next beer was a Pyramid Snow Cap Ale.

(draft) Nice and smooth, no particular flavor jumped out and grabbed me. This kind of reminded me of Pete's Wicked Winter Ale.

My last beer of the night was a draft of Spezial Rauchbier Lager. I've had this before, from a bottle, and don't really have any updates to that old rating.

I liked it a lot, but I could detect no smoke whatsoever.

Aside from the beer, I spent the night talking with one of LaptopGirl's ex-boyfriends about nothing in particular.

I got text-messaged about a dozen times by someone asking if I was pissed off. By the end of the night I was a little pissed - because of all the damn text messages.

I left fairly early as I had (have!) a rare Sunday morning work appointment.