oh hai

Our choir director, giving us pronunciation notes in rehearsal this week: "We don't want to say 'NIEW-born child,' it's too nasal for our character. NOO-born child. Like, 'ooh, a baby!'"
Me, filters obliterated: "Well, of course, you don't say 'ew, a baby!'"
A: *overhears me, cracks up, can't stop laughing for like the next three minutes*

*

H, upon arrival in Albuquerque: "... why is there snow in New Mexico?!"
Me: "It's a mile above sea level! It's like Denver!"
H: "I thought it was going to be like the Bay Area, or Phoenix."
Me: "I did tell you to bring a jacket."
H: "Isn't like how you always tell me to bring a jacket and I'm usually fine without?"
Me: "Do you wanna build a snowman?"
H: "NO."

*

Weather reports out of Boston are crowing over the second major snowstorm incoming this week, bombogenesis over the Atlantic, and many of my friends there are freaking out about how this is happening on such a similar schedule to Snowpocalypse 2015. Though the current bet is that it'll probably remain out at sea and miss the New England coast for anything but a few more sprinkles.

While I am actually a bit envious of all of the pictures of the deep, freshly-fallen snow people have been posting, I'm also really, really glad that I don't have to shovel snow anymore. That I don't have to penguin-walk everywhere trying not to slip on black ice. That when I bike home at night, my fingers may complain (I was wearing gloves!), but 25 years in New England taught me to layer a wool sweater and a puffer vest. That I'm plucking lemons off the tree from our front porch - in January - and incorporating them into lemon chicken for dinner and wild rice pancakes for breakfast. (Said wild rice pancakes: I took Molly Yeh's recipe and accidentally doubled the wild rice, added cardamom and lemon zest, and grabbed a jar of cloudberry compote for ease of portability/topping; brought them to a breakfast picnic with bike friends this morning instead of our usual coffee because of the general strike.)

In related news, boston dot com posted a list of Boston's top 11 biggest snowstorms by accumulation since they started keeping track, and I was there for most of them, ahahaha.

1. February 17-18, 2003 - 27.6". This was right after Andrew and I had broken up, and I was absolutely blaming the giant snowstorm on him, hahaha. 😁 I lived in an apartment in the Fenway at this point, so thankfully I didn't have to shovel, and aside from having to go to work, mostly got to sit in my apartment and mope dreamily out the window, like the heroine in a romance novel at the nadir.

4. March 31-April 1, 1997 - 25.4". I'd gone to Boston for the weekend with college friends and escaped back to the Pioneer Valley just as the snow started falling. College dorm living sitch, so I didn't have to shovel, but whatever they used to keep the paths vaguely clear smelled like rotting bananas and soy sauce, and this was the kind of thing I got to learn about in my first New England winter, hahaha.

5. Blizzard of 2005 - January 22-24 - 25.4". I'd moved to an apartment in Porter, didn't have to shovel, but we had prime views out our window of people stumbling to the White Hen. I would, however, move into a place with a private patio later that year, which would require me to begin shoveling myself out in order to take the trash out. At least I also began dating a guy who had to shovel himself out, and we could commiserate together!

6. February 8-9, 2013 - 24.9" . Our final winter in Roxbury, where most of our shoveling was stairs, but a loooot of them.
https://www.instagram.com/p/VkNcd8iRrS/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
https://www.instagram.com/p/VkMsdvCRqB/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
https://www.instagram.com/p/VhsUnoCRlF/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

7. January 26-28, 2015 - 24.6".

9. February 7-9, 2015 - 23.1". These last two were part of Snowpocalypse 2015, and if you used one particular entrance to the Minuteman Trail to get to Alewife that winter, THANK ME AND hyounpark FOR SHOVELING, because the snowplow drivers kept dumping all the neighborhood snow in the culdesac at the foot of our street and blocking path access! (As is, we couldn't get our car out of the driveway until like May.) And no, we did not have a snowblower, no place to store one. I had buff-ass biceps that winter. :P

And now the word "shoveling" sounds like technobabble since I've used it so much this post.

Grateful for every update I see from Minnesota friends right now, affirming that they're ... okay isn't the right word; infuriated and joining with their neighbors and friends to stand up against evil in whatever ways they can is probably more accurate. Marching, recording, feeding people, sharing information. The rest of us, doing what we can from the outside, preparing for ourselves to be next. Sending love to you all.

And once that's done, I ( turn back to cooking. )

( finally succumbing to ebooks )

Speaking of scifi, we dropped Paramount after the latest season of Strange New Worlds, partly because of CBS's actions, partly because too many subscriptions and we're trying to cut back, partly because Amazing Race was yet another season of known-quantity reality stars instead of reasonably-believable normies. But we did get to watch the first episode of Starfleet Academy because they made it available on YouTube. And yeah, while I agree the preview made it look like "Star Trek: Dawson's Creek," as hyounpark put it, I really needed to see a Starfleet captain stand up for justice; I needed to see people reaching across cultures from different backgrounds. I worry that the current environment is going to shift broadcastable storylines by next season; S1 was filmed mostly before Biden left office, while S2 is filming now, after CBS bent the knee. But I still found it promising enough to want to watch more; I just don't know how to watch it in a way that balances the scales for me.

Today has been a very bookish day for me, albeit a highly social one.

Romance book club in the morning; this month, a Regency romance (J. Winifred Butterworth's A Bloomy Head. (Reminder to self - send minervacat the book club list, it's just in inconvenient-to-share format.) Good to shake up my usual contemporary/romantasy tendencies, and we had a fun discussion about the perils of how to introduce a large cast of characters (I compared it both to the Baby-Sitters Club *and* Pucking Around, ahahaha), and historical portrayals and understandings of nonbinary and alternate genders, but I think overall I still don't gravitate towards Regency romances in general. Also, the series is literally "Regency Cheesemakers," I would like more cheese content please!

Afterwards, I headed over to Book Passage as a friend was having an event for their book on transportation advocacy (If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight). Of course we chatted some about specific local bugbears (why do people keep trying to close SF's newest and reputedly most popular park to turn it back into a highway, how do we get things done when we're a small minority against an entrenched system, how do we get across to people that parking on a public street isn't their personal space, it belongs to all of us? how do these lessons apply in a broader context?). Then Heather and I were hungry, so after stumbling across a surprisingly long line at El Porteño (no empanadas for us!), we went down the street to Gott's to address our growling stomachs with chili and sweet potato fries and milkshakes.

Our timing meant we finished eating, looked up into a cotton-candy sunset sky, and both yanked out our cameras to chase the color for awhile. The sun had mostly set by the time we got on the ferry, but it meant we had a lovely view of the city lights as we pulled away across the bay, under the bridge. Unanimous agreement: the ferry is such a relaxing transportation option compared to BART.

And then I came home to the scent of 红烧肉 (hóngshāo ròu, Shanghai red-braised pork belly) wafting out of our kitchen. Now that our cookbooks are all organized and on shelves again instead of half of them being stacks on the floor, it's so much easier to browse through them, which is how hyounpark spent his afternoon while I was out gallivanting around the bay :)

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Before that, catching up with bitty and anirt Friday evening; an amazing rose pistachio cake at Mey Friday morning with Jen, ladyjax, other Heather, and Cade; solid rehearsal Wednesday at choir as we work on two pieces for this spring about migrant experiences. Time with friends all the more precious now.