Yes yes, I am a pathetic correspondent. You are 100 percent correct about that.

And I have no excuse, really. Life just got away from me.

Nothing really new to report. Kitty's looking at grad schools; she and Suzu and I will be in Denver this coming weekend to check out one possibility. (I'm looking forward to *finally* visiting the addition to the Denver Art Museum -- this will only be my third try...) Amy's headaches are just about under control. It's been a year since my mother died; that's kind of been on my mind over the past couple of days. I'm continuing to drive to Baltimore every Saturday for Czech classes. And I'm still desultorily editing the NaNo novel. I need to make at least one more pass, and then I think it will be ready to farm out to a reviewer or two. (Yes! A couple of people have volunteered to read it for me! What fools!)

Back in January, President Obama talked smack about Washingtonians' ability to cope with snow. Not only do I agree with him, I predicted it. For folks who have lived in the snowbelt, DC's (lack of) weather coping skills are a source of continuing frustration. Today, however, my frustration came to a head. We had a snowstorm roll through during morning rush hour. We only got a couple of inches of snow out here in my neck of the woods, but I slid through a stop sign here in our apartment complex, and I-66 was a snowy mess. Ask me if I saw a snowplow.

Vienna Metro must have been short-staffed; whoever spread salt on the sidewalk didn't get it up the hill to the parking garage (I could *see* where they quit) and the unsheltered part of the station platform hadn't seen a shovel at all. No, check that: the shovel was right there, leaning against a shelter roof pillar.

Yo, dudes, get a clue. When it snows, you can't just put down salt and then go home and hope for sunshine. You have to plow. You have to *keep* plowing. If you're shoveling, you might have to shovel more than once -- but "at least once" is pretty much mandatory.

Someday I will once again live in a place that knows how to handle snow. Someday....

</rant>