Magic January Fireworks Snowflakes

Our San Diego girl Jacquie wrote an email yesterday that read:

The talk around here is all about keeping quiet about the perfect weather so that our snowed-in friends and family members don't send us mail bombs.

I told her not to worry, not about me at least; San Diego's perfect weather is for enjoying, for the love of pete. I mean, they don't call it San Diego, yeah well, you know.

But the peeps around here? They do love to complain. About the snow, about the cold, about how badly the roads are plowed, about the slush. The thing is? It's winter. And the complainers actually seem to be the same people who complain about the heat in the summer. And I firmly believe -- and Mom backs me up here -- that if you complain about summer, you're not allowed to complain about winter too.

And not to be a sanctimonious basitd, but if you do complain about the winter, you end up complaining for fully half the year around these parts, and that is just too grim a life to live, if you ask me.

Plus, if you don't have winter? And, well, if you don't have a Mistah Schleckah, preferably with a few glasses of wine in him and a camera in his hands? you would not get weird psychedelic cool snowstorm photos like these:

Right?

Mistah was out there the other night during another doozy of a storm, aiming the camera to the skies, and that is exactly when the magic started to happen.

Man, it was snowing hard.

This one reminds me exactly of Sailfest fireworks:

Right?

A wild windy wacky winter night.

I know. I know it's hard. I know in one day hats fall into veritable lakes of brown slushy street water (check) and city buses drive right by without stopping (check) and cars and trucks pay no heed to pedestrians and do that slushy splash right onto said pedestrian's jeans while walking downtown (sigh, check) . . .

. . . but at least there's a cool sky, and our cool trees . . . 

. . . and sometimes Mistah switches into his Blue Period, and then things start to really get wack-o . . .

. . . then they switch back to to reality . . .

. . . and then . . . back to Blue.

It's fun, right?

Do you know that the State of Connecticut has now officially had more snowfall in Januray 2011 than any other month in recorded history?

Sure, those Cavemen may have had lots of snow in a random January back in their day, but they didn't properly record it, now did they?

And even if they had, Cavemen's records were always suspicious. Someone really should have audited their Caveman asses.

But Cavemen or audits or January precipitation records notwithstanding, Wednesday night was a fine night to stand on the deck and gaze up at the heavens and into the gigantic snowflakes falling down below.

It really was something. And anybody who knows us, or who has been on us deck, or who has vicariously enjoyed the lovefest that is Champagne Homerun Derby upon that selfsame deck recognizes the trees:

It's these guys. They're just in a little bit of a different mode these days. We're all in a different mode around here these days. Sometimes we have the beach and a blanket and a cooler of beers and an umbrella. And sometimes we have snow-covered sneakers and mud-splattered jeans and mittens and a slush-soaked hat.

Sometimes we have corks flying into the green, tall, stately evergreens of Champagne Park.

. . . and sometimes we have to content ourselves with Magical January Fireworks Snowflakes.