this is global warming?

No. Global warming has become an archaic term. To be more precise (until we find out how much trouble we're really in and have to come up with an even more cataclysmic descriptor), I think "climate change" is just about the level of understatement we humans can take about now. As the sweat broke out from under the pancake (Bronze #5) on the brow of the guy on the Weather Channel, he begged, "Is there ANYwhere in the US that isn't under attack by Mother Nature this weekend?".

First answer: no. Second answer: Mother Nature knows she doesn't have to do anything but watch, let alone attack. Third answer: we're cycling, folks. That's a good thing. Really. It gets bad when there's stasis, when it's silent and nothing moves. Now, THAT'S dangerous. In other words, when She holds her breath...

There, there... Did that help? Me neither. Moving right along...

I grew up in Maine. Up there in the tiptop righthand corner of the US of A. The other Maritime Province. Where winter goes on and on like that damn battery bunny. So you might assume an icestorm of historic proportions wouldn't phase me. Wrong. They're comparing this storm to the wicked one of 1998. That one also took out a lot of eastern Canada. Of course, odds are there have been at least another few dozen back before anyone was likely to survive to tell about it. However, this time's different. This time my elderly parents, in their home on the coast, along with another quarter of a million people, are without power. And that's just in Maine. Icy damage has blacked out most of New England and upstate New York. It'll take days, if not weeks, to get everyone's power restored. Which only begins to say how much those two gloriously perfect weeks in August are worth...

Last I heard this morning, when I got through to my sister who lives on an island nearby, my parents had gone to the Downeaster Motel for b'fast and hopefully a room. I'm waiting to hear anything else. I get it; blogging is for when you're helpless to do anything else. I think I'll go soak my head in the shower while I wait.

That's all it took; the phone just rang. The juice is back on. My parents are fine. Flushed by the excitement of survival, having tea in my sister's kitchen, and booked into the Downeaster for the duration. Exhale.