A scene straight out of Service...

...if you don't count the fact that Shiloh is not a husky, and the kittens are entirely the wrong species!

There is a line in The Cremation of Sam McGee that goes:

The heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow

which pretty much described the situation here at what I have come to call "Fort Pagosa" as night fell and the snow got down to some serious falling.

At one point last night, I woke to what sounded like a freight train going past outside the window, and before I could gather my wits, Shiloh started howling and the kittens, who had somehow wriggled their way between my knees and pitched cat camp as I slept, began to meow in chorus. I got up and walked around the house to make sure nothing was amiss, but noticed nothing unusual, except the confounded noise of the wind.

At daybreak, I noticed the overall effect of the overnight storm was not really visible along the windswept portion of the property (the area immediately around the house, which sits on top of a shale outcrop). There's even a small patch of snow-swept shale visible off to the lee side of the house. However, the driveway, which was cleared by our neighbor at around 9 pm last night as part of an ongoing agreement to do so, currently looks as if it hadn't been touched since the start of the snowfall.

I have a job due today, so I am hoping nothing goes <snap> in the electrical system, especially since the battery in the UPS apparently died in my absence.

I better get to work.

Cheers...

En passant...

From - of all places - Pravda.ru, comes some insightful commentary regarding the EU:

As recently as 2006, a most eloquent and insightful warning against the EU and the Lisbon Treaty's precursor, the ill-fated “constitution”, was given by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. Traumatized by the experience of living in the Soviet Union, Bukovsky noted the deeply disturbing similarities between the old Soviet Union and the blueprints for the EU super state. The European Commission, he noted, was the exact equivalent of the old Soviet Politbureau, in terms of the secretive way power was exercised, the recruitment and personalities of its members and the scope and reach of its decisions. The “European Parliament” today (and under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty) is a mere rubber stamp institution, just like the “Supreme Soviet” of the old USSR.

An interesting article.

Cheers...

How true...

I ran across the music of Regina Spektor a few years ago, and although I enjoy it, something has to kick me in the butt to go look for anything new from the artist.

Something just did.

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’ve lost all they’ve got
And they don’t know what for

These lyrics sort of hit close.

Cheers...