the underwear drawer

30 post in 30 days, day 12: nor'easter

Well, I'm glad we went out yesterday, because today has been the equivalent of hiding out in a bomb shelter.

photos by Peter Morgan/Associated Press

We've just been holed up inside all day because of the storm. It is, as the weather report insists on calling it, a "nor'easter." Why not "northeaster?" What, the additional -th- too much of a mouthful, I suppose. Or maybe it's supposed to be emulating the speech patterns of old New Englanders who speculate about the weather while sitting on bales of hay and squinting distrustfully at out-of-towners.

Remember back when you were a kid and went to summer camp? And how on days that it rained they just kept you all contained in some ostensibly dry room room (which always smelled damply of mildew anyway), and attempted to tamp down the frenzy of your youthful indignation by anesthetizing you with endless playings of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (psychedelic Gene Wilder version) and rounds of Bingo? That's what today feels like.

This would be a great day to just watch some marathon of a mindless cable network reality show ("Project Runway" comes to mind--I do love that red-headed brassy mom from the last season), but for the last few months, our cable has been broken. I don't know exactly when it stopped working, but one day we tried to watch TV, and we realized that the only channel we were receiving was Telemundo. So unless you want to watch "¿Qué Hay de Nuevo? con Mónica Noguera" or "Tierra de Pasiones," you aren't going to be watching much of anything. Except perhaps football--oh, excuse me, "fútbol".

Currently reading: "Better." Also, this article in the Times about the new hip resurfacing surgery, featuring one of our orthopedic surgeons.