Groundhog

Once again, woodland mammals had no effect whatsoever on the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Imagine me slackjawed in stunned disbelief.

Winter continues. It always does.

Snow fell here over the last few days and nights. I had heard the word "blizzard" bandied about a few times in the days and hours before the actual snow arrived, but it was merely a snowstorm. The difference between the two is an important one for those of us who live in areas prone to either phenomenon.

Thursday night I bundled myself warmly and stepped outside around midnight. So I guess it was Friday morning. I was out hoping to take pictures, but mostly, I think I just wanted to soak in the bright hush a big snowfall brings to Chicago.

I walked around for maybe 15 minutes, and in that time I noticed only one lone automobile shushing by me. It was nearly as quiet out as if I did not live in a city at all. What sounds there were were absorbed nicely by the layer of snow. It was easy to feel like the only soul in the city.

It is never dark in Chicago, not even deep in the night, but a fresh snow makes the whole place glow with refracted light. It's like the light cannot escape. I absorbed as many lumens into my eyes as I could, but it had no effect that I could discern on the overall brightness.

My sluggish camera found enough light bouncing off all the new white to hold focus in the night, even if all the resultant images were heavily tinged in yellows and golds. They were nearly sepias already, so it was not a giant leap for me to finish the job myself when I processed the results.

Here are a few shots from my midnight creeping:




While it crunched satisfyingly under my boots, the snowfall was a little disappointing in terms of actual accumulation.

In the shots, the lights are all severely blown out, which I guess is technically bad photography, but I love how they turned out nonetheless.

*****

And I guess, if you are a bad blogger and stop posting regularly, Blogger will take away the stripey backdrop of your banner at the top of your page. Just another thing to be wary of, Blogwriters. Hope you guys can still enjoy the site without the friendly stripes until I can remember where that thing was in my code and fix it.

Maybe it's a punishment not for the lack of posts so much as that I think it may have been longer than six months since I posted about children or animals, in clear violation of the Blogger terms of service. I think my last post that counts was probably "Sphinx," in which I recounted my difficulties in teaching my cat to quiz me with riddles in our idle time.

The cat, of course, has nearly nothing but idle time. His schedule is clear. I left out the classifieds not long ago, in hopes that he would show some interest once more in computer programming, as he did when he was young. To show his contempt for my plan to get him to start contributing to the household, he or his sister urinated on the pages.

Does this qualify as a cat post now? Can I have my stripes back?

*****

I think this blog is open again, Blogreader. Soon enough, you might find Monday Morning Haiku (often before Tuesday afternoon) and buzzing about a fiction contest sometime in the future. Maybe even the reinstatement of the ill-fated "Ask the Moon" advice column.

But smaller steps are necessary. I feel unreasonably skittish about blogging lately, and I don't want to spook myself right back into the darkness.

In the meantime, as I find my feet again, feel free to drop me a comment, tag me with a meme.