A Christmas card from the Hotel Tschuggen brings back memories of a trip to Switzerland...

Today I received a really nice personal Christmas card from the family that runs the Hotel Tschuggen in Grindelwald, Switzerland. I stayed at the Tschuggen last February when I spoke at a conference. I have a pile of pictures, in case you have not seen them, and a story about the trip (see Bhangra polka in the high Alps...).

One of my most favorite pictures of the trip is of Rose Baker, Nils, and I during a coffee break at the conference hotel with a great view of the beautiful Swiss countryside out the window:

The Christmas card brought back some nice travel memories.

French roast...

French roast coffee today at Wegman's, with a little Internet access at Wegman's Internet Access Cafe (see video linked at right).

Now, was that so bad?

The storm is over. Looks like four or five inches of snow with a crust on it, although unofficial reports provided to the National Weather Service measured snow at six inches in State College, Pennsylvania, my home town. The photo at the left is from my office window to the street below. Typical winter day. There was freezing rain last night. The roads were slippery and treacherous during the home commute. No big problems, as far as I can see.

The coffee today is courtesy of Yuki. I am brewing in my coffee maker (see photo on right) a thermos full for the remainder of the day. Alessi Imported Caffee Epresso says the can ("100% pure coffee"...."Makes great cappuccino"...."Hand roasted and ground in Italy"). I can't find any information on the net about the coffee, but Alessi apparently makes high-end coffee brewers (see Google of "Alessi Coffee"). Yuki bought the coffee in Taiwan, I believe. Very full-bodied and tasty. Thank you, Yuki.

Dressed today in my white wool fisher's sweater that I bought in Ireland 15 or 20 years ago:

I rarely wear this sweater because it is so warm that it boils the socks off me. I thought today might be a cold day, but it is so warm in here that I will be stripping soon. Make sure you open the web cam in my office...LOL.

PS: Listening to some nice music today streaming to my iTunes player from SoulfulSmoothJazz.com.

Bianca prepares for the snow/sleet/freezing rain...

Bianca--my 10 year old, pure white greyhound--rests next to the wood stove last night after her walk in the 0 deg F chill.

She is tired after her walk, and I am sure she is pondering the weather that is supposed to hit today at about noon. The weather seems to be moving in (see the radar map) from the south and southwest. We could get up to 8 inches of snow, but the real kicker is the freezing rain and sleet that will start later tonight. As I understand it, sleet is precipitation consisting of generally transparent frozen or partially frozen raindrops. Freezing rain, to finely discriminate, is supercooled droplets of water that freeze on impact with the surface of the earth. The result is two different frozen hells. Ice storms can be the most devastating of winter weather phenomena and often are the cause of automobile accidents, power outages and personal injury.

Local schools are closed, even though we really do not have any weather impeding transportation right now. I am sure that school administrators are worried that things will get nasty later in the day. If kids were in school when nasty weather hit, parents likely would complain. That would be more troublesome than bad weather. Moreover, some kids just would not be sent to school, lowering the average daily attendance of the school district and reducing state reimbursements to the district. No, better to tack on more school days at the end of the year when all is sunny and calm.

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
--Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894), A Christmas Carol

I am waiting.

More talk about the weather. I guess I am getting old...

It's pretty cold (14 deg F right now). If it were any warmer, I am sure the locusts would descend on us. However, just ice and snow. We are out of the locust breeding cycle, I suppose. The bugs don't like to sleep together when they are frozen like ice cubes, I guess.

From our weather alert:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STATE COLLEGE HAS ISSUED A WINTER
STORM WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM THURSDAY TO 12 PM
EST FRIDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.
A COMPLEX WINTER STORM WILL AFFECT THE REGION FROM THE EARLY
AFTERNOON HOURS ON THURSDAY...AND WILL LAST THROUGH FRIDAY
MORNING. SNOW WILL DEVELOP DURING THE EARLY TO MID AFTERNOON HOURS
THURSDAY. THE SNOW WILL THEN MIX WITH...AND EVENTUALLY CHANGE TO A
MIXTURE OF SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN TOWARD...OR JUST AFTER SUNSET
THURSDAY. THIS MIXTURE OF SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN WILL CONTINUE
THROUGH MUCH OF THURSDAY NIGHT...ALTHOUGH PRECIPITATION MAY CHANGE
TO PLAIN RAIN FOR A TIME LATE THURSDAY NIGHT.
AT THIS TIME...IT APPEARS THAT 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOWFALL WILL
ACCUMULATE BY THURSDAY EVENING ACROSS THE AREA. STORM TOTAL
SNOWFALL ACCUMULATION OF 2 TO 4 INCHES ARE CURRENTLY EXPECTED.
HOWEVER...IN ADDITION TO THE SNOWFALL...ICE ACCRETION OF AROUND
ONE QUARTER OF AN INCH IS EXPECTED. THIS MAY LEAD TO SOME DOWNED
TREE LIMBS AND POWER LINES...AND SUBSEQUENT SCATTERED POWER
OUTAGES ACROSS THE AREA THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING.

OK, so this is what Robert Frost wrote about the role of ice:

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Was in Harper's Magazine in December 1920.

We definitely will have ice rather than fire over the next few days.