jimsjournal
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This was originally going to be an entry for yesterday but all I accomplished was setting up the title and I ran out of time and energy... so I'm taking yesterday's file that only had a title and a date, keeping the title and changing the date. Fortunately it is still very cold outside (although a degree or two warmer than yesterday). It's 21° F (-6° C) right now, which is several degrees warmer than yesterday but the winds are still brisk (20 mph, gusts to 30 mph) so the wind chill factor is bitterly cold. Of course, it is all relative. James Lileks (who lives in Minneapolis) noted that the temperature outside his house was -11° F (which is minus twenty-something for those of you who measure in meters and liters) -- but that was yesterday afternoon -- today it is supposed to be much warmer there, probably all the way up to 5°F (with snow) -- I must say, I think Minneapolis is a nice city, but when winter comes, I am glad I don't live there. Having spent most of my life in upstate New York, I still think of the climate here in Rhode Island as being milder. Of course that was not true in 1978 -- yes, this is the anniversary of the Blizzard of '78, the storm that over a period of two or three days dumped up to fifty-five inches of snow on southern New England. Thousands of people were stranded away from home as snow-filled roads became blocked by cars that could not move and then got snowed under even deeper (a friend recounted to me how when his car got stuck he struggled through the drifts and spent three days in a motel). To this day, Rhode Islanders rush to purchase milk and bread given any weather forecast of a possible winter storm.
Saturday night Nancy and I drove up to Providence to see Our Town at TrinityRep. We wandered about in the Providence Place Mall, no particular purpose, just looking around in Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, and Pottery Barn (yeah, we both like looking around in those places, me for cooking stuff, Nancy for baking stuff, and both of us at stem ware and such) -- and then through JCPenney and Bed, Bath, and Beyond -- before leaving the mall to walk over to Trinity Brewhouse for dinner. [Sweatshirt hint: read it out loud] We had been aware that there was a Toby Keith concert that night -- only a block away from the restaurant. The restaurant was packed, standing room only. It is amazing to see so many grown men wearing cowboy hats... out in public... inside a restaurant... at night... in Providence, Rhode Island. (I rather doubt that any of them even worked on a dairy farm.) Just as I was beginning to despair that we would be able to have dinner, it must have been getting close to show time because the crowd suddenly melted away and we were able to get a table and some tasty fish and chips, and some good beer -- and still get to the theatre in a timely fashion (made easier by the theatre being only a short block away). [Another sweatshirt hint: Nancy is a devoted tennis player] The play, by the way, was excellent. Emily was beautifully played by Susannah Flood, an MFA student in a theatre program jointly run by TrinityRep and Brown University. The part belonged to her. The absence of the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl removed much of the impetus to watch it but Nancy has become a bit hooked on football from the years when the Patriots were in the Super Bowl -- or, at least, hooked on the end-of-season hype for the playoffs and the Super Bowl. (And, of course, we did watch the Patriots lose to the Colts in the playoff game a couple of weeks ago.) I must say, it was an entertaining game -- lots of drama, especially in the first half -- although I was getting a bit bored toward the end. Nancy and Jill and I ate in the living room while watching the game (Jeremy put in a twelve hour day at work -- Sunday was a big day in the pizza business) and I had to laugh at one point when I realized my wife and my daughter were in the living room watching a football game and I was in the kitchen fixing dinner. Heh! [The sweatshirt says "Anyone for tennis?" -- "NE 1 4 10 S?" -- but you figured that out immediately, right?]
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