I think VigilanteGirl is psychic or something.

I hadn't got two feet inside the door before she was all "What's wrong with you? You're such a grouch."

I never thought of myself as a person that wears their mood on their sleeve. I used to be told that my eyes would change color depending on my current state of anger, arousal, boredom, or whatever, but I was nowhere near close enough for anyone to tell me what color my eyes were.

So she must be psychic, because she was absolutely right.

I'm in a crappy mood.

There's no particular reason. I guess the bullshit's just been piling up, sort of like the snow, and it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, sort of like the snow.

I can feel that I'm closing myself off again, and I don't particularly like it, but I do understand it. I reach out and find nothing, so I stop reaching out. The next logical step is to prevent people from reaching out to me, so I start rebuilding the castle walls.

And if that doesn't work maybe I'll put in a sniper tower or something.

Or maybe I just need a real vacation where I'm not stuck at home listening to the snow pulling my gutters loose.

The weather did its best to wreak havoc on my family's holday plans, but only suceeded in shuffling things around.

Instead of my sisters and I meeting and Dina's house, we went to Neisha's and trudged through their unplowed driveway.

Instead of having my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins to my house for Christmas Eve, we all ended up at my grandmothers house. The official reasoning for that was to make it so my grandmother wouldn't have to go out in the cold, but I think the unofficial reason was that Christmas Eve has been at my grandmother's house for the last million years - except for last year when it was at my house - and it just somehow feels right to be at her house on that night.

Afterwards, my cousin Mike and I played pool until nearly 4:00 AM, and I'm feeling pretty sluggish from my halfassed attempt to get a decent amount of sleep.

Right now I'm sitting here pretty bored. I want to go out and do something tonight, but I'm not sure what. Rich O's is closed (for the holiday, not because of the street conditions). VigilanteGirl is working. Maybe I'll make the trek to Jeffersonville in search of Newcastle at Hooters.

Oh yeah. Mike and I split a bottle of Delirium Noel last night. A very good beer for such a cold night. After that I had my last bottle of Mad Bitch and Mike tempted fate by drinking some canned Guinness that'd been in my fridge for either months or years.

It's supposed to get fucking cold tonight. Of course that's not exactly what the weatherguy said, but I'm sure that's what he was thinking.

Because of the fucking cold and the even more fucking cold (fuckinger?) forecast for tomorrow night, I've made a little bed/house/fort for this stray cat that lives under my deck.

She's just the sweetest thing, but I cannot allow her into the house as I'm afraid that she'll get my cats sick.

Normally I don't worry too much about her, but it's supposed to be so fucking cold for the next two nights that I just had to do something.

I took my cat carrier, stuffed a pillow into it, wrapped it in a beach towel, and put it in my garage. My back garage door I propped open about six inches so Spook (the cat) could enter and leave the garage as she saw fit.

So now Spook is laying in her new little shelter, just purring like crazy when I went to check on her. She's just such a good cat. I wish I could find a home for her.

(This entry brought to you by Delirium Tremens.)

It's been said, mostly by me in this 'blog, that I cannot take a hint.

Or, to be more specific I guess, I do not recognize hints, and when I (rarely) do, I do not take whatever action the hint is urging me toward.

Tonight I recognized a hint. Hell, astronauts in the space station, were they to have trained their spy scopes on Southern Indiana tonight, would have recognized the damn hint.

Well I saw it, and I recognized it. I just thought it was a really bad idea, so I pretended I didn't see it.

I pretended I was incredibly, absurdly dense.

And you know, it really wasn't that tough. I had a really good role model to look to for inspiration. And for justification I suppose.

Well we all ended up driving to my completely snowed-in sister's house for gift exchanges.

Down the road from my house there's this overturned snowplow. Not the best omen.

This is my sister Neisha's road. Actually this is the good part of the road. What doesn't really show up in the picture is that the "plowed" part of the road is still over a foot deep.

An added bonus in this picture is a part of my finger.

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.