Snowed inward

[dropcap]”Snow![/dropcap] Can we borrow your snow?”

The neighborhood kids were making snow forts and afraid they’d run out.

I said sure, and they happily filled their snow saucers with icy white bounty.

They built a snowman and, probably summing up Portland’s entire approach to icy precipitation, topped it with a cardboard flag that said “FREAK!”

Big snowstorms are rare in Portland (or at least they’re rare compared to Minnesota). So,when kids see snowflakes hit the ground and actually stick, they race to use as much as they can before it’s gone.

That’s not a problem now; we’re in day 4 of Portland’s own personal winter wonderland and there’s at least 8 inches on the ground. This one was a triple header; the third storm arrived yesterday afternoon, mutating into a freezing rain that encased everything in a glassy shell.

The first day or so of a good-sized Portland snowstorm generally involves SUVs and buses skittering down snowy hills and landing in heaps at the bottom. Easterners tend to smile as frustrated Oregonians abandon their vehicles to walk home, smugly sure that none of these guys would survive a REAL snowstorm.

And on Day 1, the girls weren’t sure there’d be enough snow, no matter how much the (notoriously inaccurate) weathermen said we were going to get.

Day 2 of the storm finds streets strangely deserted as we all snuggle inside, entranced by what’s happening OUTside in the cold.

Lola sat at the big window in the guest bathroom for hours, attacking snowflakes that wind-whipped onto the window.

On Day 3, Nikki chirped piteously at the back door, wanting to go OWWWWWWT and investigate that strange white stuff. (that’s the picture at top)

I opened the door, she leapt out…and leapt right back in, hissing and spitting. She’d sunk past her belly in snow and didn’t appreciate my howls of laughter.

She spent the next hour cleaning herself, sitting on my coat well back from the door. She glared at my muffled chortles, grumbling for the snow (or me) to COME OVER HERE AND SAY THAT!

Me, I kept looking out the back door, to two little catspaw-sized tunnels in the snow.

And giggling.

I tried some time-lapse photography with the girls’ snowman while rustling through a whole bunch of chores. Darius-the-Nikon spent 6hours shooting about 1,400 frames of the action across the street, not terribly exciting but a fun (and interesting) process.

Besides, noisy shutter clicks every 15 seconds caused no end of catly investigation. Try keeping focus steady while a cat tries to balance on the camera…

Supposedly, though, Day 4 is the last day of our snow. Temps are rising–it’s a balmy 34F right now–and light rain is beginning to pockmark the icy crusts. That’s OK; I’ve done what all snowed-ins should do, and accomplished things I never get around to doing:

• Invented three new dishes: Spiced French Toast, Marionberry Porridge, and Odds&Ends stew. Two of them were very successful.
• Baked bread, cleaned out the pantry, finalized plans for a bathroom remodel, and fixed miscellaneous broken stuff
• Shoveled off the front walk, car and driveway. Twice. (not that you can tell now)
• Applied to a couple of big art shows
• Worked a bit on the new Oregon Glass Guild website (I’m the new webmaster, and we’re moving to a more responsive WordPress site)
• Read two really bad books and one exceptional book (review to follow)
• Fired a new rollup blank for OGG’s next trek up to Ryan Staub in Seattle, and started another. (I have an ulterior motive for making them; temps at night have been in the teens, which tends to freeze the pipes on the outer wall of the garage; firing continually prevents that)
• Got a headstart on a very difficult sculpture commission, a pair of goblets for a friend’s wedding. The theme is “moon and stars,” and bride and groom are avid gamers with cat and dragon avatars. All that stuff needs to figure into the goblet design. Hmmmm.

Mostly, though, I’ve been fine-tuning Morganica2 (this blog). In particular, I’ve added a directory database that will allow me (and eventually you guys) to add glassmaker resources and reviews. I maintained this as a massive PDF in the old Morganica–here it will be searchable.

It’s not really ready for readers yet, but it appears that the blog has already gone live. So far 120 visitors have checked out my test posts in the last week or so; three people commented and 11 subscribed.

So–I guess–Morganica2 is now open for business, snow and all. Lemme know how it’s going.