Happy Valentine’s Day to all! I am happy to say that I am bequeathing a bouquet of berries and other bounty to my beloved. While she specifically requested no chocolate covered strawberries, which has become a kind of tradition, I opted for an healthier alternative.
It seems the requisite remiss has left the old fritzwinkle without a recent posting. So despite my well meaning intentions, I have not exercised the discipline of cranking out news on a more regular basis. I haven’t decided whether that is due to the increasing regularity of the mundane quality I sometimes see in life, my mental meanderings veering off to dominions dull and dreary to those compelled to scan this site, or just feeling like I genuinely have had less to say. Alright, maybe that last one is pushing it, but I certainly have been feeling that wrapped up in work sensation that I don’t imagine is always entertaining to people other than me. So, apologies to all the readers, but perhaps more, apologies to Ali and her family who are generally good at listening to me prattle on about arcane compositional instruction, even sometimes doing there level best to feign interest. I suppose thanks is in order too.
In any event, this weekend the Terwedows gathered for Ali’s birthday (observed) and as anyone would expect there was much boisterous ballyhoo (as evidenced by the patriarch enjoying his potholders, below). Gifts were given, cake was consumed, and there was general jocularity on Saturday evening, all as we waited for the coming of the highly touted nor’easter. Perhaps most amusing part of the evening was the ceremonial presenting of said cake, when Ali’s stepmother, Cathy, gingerly entered the dining room with a two handfuls of inferno. The cake was ablaze with enough candles to alarm the fire marshal. I think I could literally see the frosting melting as we sang the traditional anthem. Fortunately for all Ali was able to extinguish the raging flames with a single breath, which very nearly was cause for the smoke alarm to sound. There is a photo somewhere that documents the cloud that rendered Ali invisible from across the table. I’ll have to see if it is retrievable. Until then these will have to do.
As we settled in for the evening, we all still wondered when yon nor’easter was going to arrive, bringing with it a blanket of white. Since it has been a very mild winter here and there have been many a storm hyped, but few with bite, I was skeptical. Then the reports from the Mid-Atlantic began glowing on the tube, with the images eventually migrating to Philadelphia and New York. Well, it appeared later than everyone expected, but it arrived with great fanfare, unloading over a foot of drifting powder on us all along the New England coast. I arose to discover that this time the weather reporters were right. It would be one of those days where nearly everything would be shut down. Being that it was a Sunday it was not an absolute dire situation; but it became more so as Ali and I were trapped in our apartment with almost no heat and the main television finally giving out, all first thing in the morning. If there is anything that would make a body slightly surly, it is being confined to a small space of something near 58 F combined with limited visual stimuli of the artificial variety. Fortunately, the heat would start to function by the mid-afternoon. The television, however, is no in need of a cemetery and we were relegated to the mini screen backup. So, I am now in the market for a new tube, even though I would really rather not be.
Yet, the saga continues.
