False Alarm

I think it's a condition of employment for weathermen:  your forecast MUST be a worst-case scenario, come Hell or high water.  So our "one to three inches" has devolved into this:

Now

Bands and areas of light to moderate snow will linger across much of eastern New Mexico and the northern Sacramento Mountains and adjacent Highlands through mid day. Most areas will see little in the way of new snow accumulation but up to an inch is possible in snow bands. Conditions are expected to improve this afternoon.

It's chilly though, at 30 degrees.  I'm thinkin' this might be as warm as it gets today.  I'm snug as the proverbial bug/rug and it's been perfect sleeping weather.  That's code for "I just got up."  The coffee is EXCELLENT this morning!

Clearing Up Some Possible Confusion

Many, if not most, of you Gentle Readers may have been confused by my post title last night when I referred to Niklas Lidstrom as "The Perfect Human."  And that's understandable unless your name is SN1 or mebbe one or two others... those of you that are among the few, the proud, the hockey fans.  And so along comes Pierre LeBrun with an explanation... to wit: "Nicklas Lidstrom, 'The Perfect Human'."  Let's quote:

DETROIT -- The passes are tape to tape, right in the middle of the stick blade, timed just right for the player taking them in stride. One after the other -- zip, zip, zip -- Nicklas Lidstrom seemingly can't miss.

It's a Thursday morning practice at Joe Louis Arena, one just like any other of the 3,000 or so practices he's skated in the past 20 years. And just like those other times, Lidstrom is dead-on every single time he makes a play.

"We call him the Perfect Human," said Detroit Red Wings teammate Niklas Kronwall. "And there's a reason for it. Whatever he does, he seems to do perfectly, so I think that's a pretty good nickname."

The Perfect Human is 40 years old. Not that you can tell while watching him on the ice this season. After failing to get nominated for the Norris Trophy in 2009-10, Lidstrom is back stronger than ever, and if the season ended today, it says here he'd be picking up his seventh award as the NHL's top defenseman.

Read the whole thing if'n you're a hockey fan; you'll burn in Hell if you don't read it if'n you're a Wings fan.  The rest of you... the hoi polloi, the Great Unwashed, the ignurunt... can read or not, as you see fit.  Whatever.  But be advised this article is the longest, most in-depth profile of Lidstrom I've read in quite a while.  The quotes are priceless, coming as they do from the highest levels of hockey, including Bobby Orr, the guy Lidstrom is frequently compared to and the greatest defenseman of all time.  It's great good stuff, and the piece just might be the best thing LeBrun has EVER done.  Don't ignore this one if you're a hockey fan.  Just don't.

Why I Don't Cook More Often

I eat out a lot.  Prolly way more than I should, actually, but I do eat well.  I'll admit to making a couple o' runs a month to Mickey Dee's and I'm not unknown at our local taqueria, either.  But I generally patronize "real" restaurants when eating out and I do this mostly because I can.

That said, I'm no stranger in the kitchen and I'm a pretty danged good cook, if I say so myself.  I pretty much taught The Second Mrs. Pennington how to cook (remind me to tell you sometime about the first meal she ever tried to cook for me, the short of it being she fixed lasagna, without boiling the lasagna noodles first.  Yeah: inedible.  School commenced the following day.) and I had my regular turn in the kitchen when I lived a conventional, i.e., married, life.

But these days?  I'm lucky if I actually cook... as opposed to "nuke"... dinner more than once a week.  You might ask why and here's part of the answer:

Cooking is a major PITA when you have VERY limited space in which to work.  The pic above is about halfway through the process of dinner preparation, and I was making a salad when I took the pic.  What went before was paring the pork chops, cutting bacon into one-inch squares, and slicing the onion used in the dish.  All that stuff stacked in the sink (bread, etc., on the left) is the contents of my breadbox (aka the nuker), which was heating up a bowl of beets when I took this pic.  Stuff used in previous steps has already been washed and is in the drainer.

So what's for dinner?  This is the entree:

That's a couple of thick center cut pork chops smothered in sauerkraut after being browned in bacon fat for a minute a side... simmer for 20 minutes and serve.  There's also half an onion lurking in there, along with two cloves of crushed garlic.  And the bacon bits, of course.  We don't throw much away.

Dinner is served:

Yum.  Fixing this was a pain but the results were worth it!

I might be motivated to cook more often if I lived in an RV with a kitchen like this:

Just look at that counter space!  (Sigh)

Waiting

For this (courtesy of the NWS/ABQ):

... Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 6 PM this evening to 11 am MST Friday...

The National Weather Service in Albuquerque has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for snow... which is in effect from 6 PM this evening to 11 am MST Friday. The Winter Storm Watch is no longer in effect.

* Snow accumulations... 1 to 3 inches across the east Central Plains... except locally around 4 inches on the higher Mesa tops of The Caprock.

Our brief three-day, mid-70s respite from winter weather is over, for the moment.  We'll be back into the low 60s by Sunday however and that's a great good thing.  I can do outdoor Happy Hours in that sort of WX, all that's required is a sweatshirt and the absence of wind.

So.  We did our bi-weekly commissary/beer run out to the base early this afternoon and we're all stocked up on consumables and good things to eat.  Ol' Man Winter should feel free to do his worst -- I'm prepared.  Bring it ON!

Traffic Signs

It feels like this sometimes, don't it?

From the usual source.

Congrats to The Perfect Human!

It's hard to believe he's gone this long without one, but St. Nick got his first ever hat trick tonight.  Here's Sean Leahy, writing at Wyshynski's place:

No. 1 Star: Nicklas Lidstrom, Detroit Red Wings

In his 1442nd game, Lidstrom recorded his first NHL hat trick, along with an assist, during a 5-2 win over the St. Louis Blues. Lidstrom has 19 career two-goal games and finished his first hat trick with an empty netter with 30 seconds remaining in the game. Henrik Zetterberg had a hand in each of Lidstrom's goals and finished with four assists on the night. Danny Cleary had a three-point night, including his team-leading 14th goal of the season.

I listened to the game on my Very Expensive Radio and was amazed to hear this was Lidstrom's first-ever hat trick.  Somehow I thought he'd done it before... but no.  Not bad for a 40 year old six-time-Norris-winning defenseman, eh?

Tonight's game was MUCH better than that 5-0 debacle against the Kings Monday night.  How any team can put 51 shots on goal and still get shut out... let alone the freakin' Wings, at HOME... remains something of a mystery to me.  But it is what it is, and tonight's game was a great way to rebound from an embarrassing loss. 

Ya Learn Sumthin' New EVERY Day!

And today I learned how to say "dickhead" in Russian.  Thus:

zalupa (залу́па) means "penis head" (from old Russian "lupit'" - here, "to peel off" (like "lupit' jajtso" - "to peel off egg shell"); therefore, this is "what you can see when the foreskin is pulled back or removed").

I TOLD ya I got great good stuff from Twitter, didn't I?  This was from a re-tweet by Greg Wyshynski (a hockey blogger I follow) and the subject was Wikipedia's list of Russian profanity.  Twitter: better than Facebook.  More useful, too.

If you want a Dicky Dick Head of your own... well, go here.  We live only to serve.

I Wasn't Always Scrooge

I've been seeing more than a few Christmas posts around the 'sphere of late and more than a few featuring the ways we decorate for the holiday.  I don't do any decorating at all these days, which is partly a function of my humbuggery and partly because I have absolutely NO space for decorations of any sort.  But it wasn't always this way.  Witness:

Those two pics are from my house in Ferndale, a near suburb of Dee-troit.  The top pic is from around 1989 or so, the second is around 1991 and features granddaughter Anastasia.  I scoured the archives this morning for pictures of other Christmases past and found virtually nothing.  Well... there WERE these two gems:

Heh.  That would be Lil Bucky "Hopalong" Pennington, c.1950 or '51.  We were cowboys then, and young.

Well, We Beat Facebook to Death...

...so let's do Twitter!  I'm not gonna beat on Twitter, not really.  I LIKE Twitter and get a lot of good stuff from it.  That said, I found this while reading about that cool Facebook graphic I posted earlier today:

I found it surprising that Brazilians tweet more than Americans... at least today.  But isn't this graphic remarkably similar to the Facebook graphic, as far as Twitter's global penetration goes?  I think so.  The graphic is dynamic in that it shows tweets in real-time and is interactive in a limited sense.

More o' the Same

Today and tomorrow, anyhoo.  We're in from the day's errands and it was pretty danged cool to be jetting around P-Ville with the top down on December 14th.  And now we're gearing up for another outdoor Happy Hour which, including tomorrow, might be the last for a while.  Witness:

Well, Hey!  It IS December, innit?  Ya takes what ya gets.

Well, It's Just ME...

... but this is why I hold Facebook in contempt:

World Moments

Whether it be the tragedy of the Haitian earthquake or the heroic rescue of the Chilean miners ("mineros" in Spanish), global news events captured the world's attention. People shared their collective sadness, concern and hope. Some even let the world know what was happening on the ground in Haiti and Chile.

The world came together for the World Cup, with as many as a half of all status updates referring to the competition at some points during the games.

Say What?

While HMU made its debut, it wasn't the only digital vernacular to make the list. Talk about "airplanes" surged this year, not because people suddenly discovered travel but because they were citing lyrics from the hugely popular song "Airplanes" by B.o.B. "Barn raising" was the most popular phrase for the Games category as gamers on Facebook asked their friends to help them out on FarmVille.

Bieber Fever

Popular culture also shaped people's conversations with each other. Justin Bieber fans couldn't keep their enthusiasm to themselves, making him the only musician on the list. As popular movies such as "Toy Story 3" and "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" premiered, friends shared their opinions. And who didn't want to look hip by telling their friends about their new iPad or iPhone 4?

That would be an analysis of the top Faceboook memes for 2010.  Can you say "vapid?"  Sure ya can!

I know, I know... it's a great way to make and maintain contact with long-lost buddies, buy a cow or two, and all that.  And Sarah Palin can be your friend!

Update, 1240 hrs:  Both CNN and Fox News have articles about this stunning visualization of global Facebook connections:

That's a screen-shot (click for larger, of course) of a portion of the high-res graphic you can see here.  The accompanying article is interesting, as well.  I guess ya can't argue with 500 million people worldwide, can ya?

Talent

"That just wasn't right!" sez he.  Wrong... that was right as rain!

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Pink Floyd...

It's true:  I wish you were here.  A day like this, while not wasted, would surely benefit from convivial conversation and shared libations.  But here we are, self-satisfied and content in our solitude with bell beer, book, and candle cigar:

Such a beautiful day!

Our New (Digital) Age

This is what happens to kids whose parents have owned digital cameras since Day One, and that would be just about everyone under the age of 12 in these United States and every other industrialized country:

From the notes accompanying this animation:

We take a photo every day (at least we tried to!) since birth until the present.  Stop motion human growth!

Yep, that would be Natalie: zero to ten years in under two minutes.

In other things digital... the Nativity, reimagined for Our New Digital Age.



Yeah, it's in Spanish Portuguese but I'm sure you get it.  Feliz Natal!

EVERYone Talks About It...

... and some of my blog-buds are sufferin' for it as well, in places as diverse as Tennessee, Minnesota, and (we assume) Calgary.  You expect winter storms and tons o' snow Up Nawth but not so much in places like Nashville.  Let's just say "I feel yore pain."  Coz I DO.  The memories of that sorta stuff are strong, indeed, but I think I'm safe in speculating that I'll never see another storm drop 24 inches of frozen precip on my head ever again.  I know, I know... "never say never."  Well, I just did.  We're feelin' jes a lil bit cocky in this space at the moment.  Why?

Not to rub it in or anything but there's this:

You can bet yer boots that we shall have three consecutive days of outdoor Happy Hours beginning tomorrow.  Not today, though.  51 degrees is just a tad too nippy for outdoor drinking, even in a light jacket and sweater.  Yeah, I AM gettin' soft in my old age.  I think that's allowed.

Guinness-Certified

113,411 crazy people, all in one place:

I think that's pretty cool (heh), actually, but it ain't MY cuppa.  Now with that said, I'm thinkin' this record for attendance at a hockey game should stand for a while, unless and until the NHL puts the Winter Classic in a similar venue.  But there aren't THAT many stadiums in North America that seat as many people as The Big House, if any.  And there prolly ain't that many crazy people in one place elsewhere, either.

Stone Cold Beauty

Last night at The Joe:

As the announcers said... "a goal scorer's goal!"  Datsyuk was hot last night... he's hot EVERY night... and that goal was a thing of beauty.  The game was between two Original Six teams and both are leading their divisions, separated only by a single point overall.  Lots of Habs fans made the trip from Quebec to Dee-troit; the announcers on My Very Expensive Radio remarked often on that fact.  It sure sounded like a good one.

The Wings were lucky to get the win IMHO.  While it was all Wings in the first two frames, the Wings were on their heels in the third.  It's not often ya come away with a win when the third period action looks like this:

The Habs outshot the Wings 20-3 in the third but Jimmy Howard was hot.  He had to be.

―:☺:― 

In other hockey news... about 109,000 folks will watch The Big Chill At The Big House in Ann Arbor today.

The game will result in a new world-record for attendance at a hockey game IF the stadium fills to capacity.  That's a big "if," because of a number of factors, including weather (30 degrees is the game-time forecast), common sense, and other stuff.  Most folks will be going for the experience/party, judging from the sight lines in the pic above.  But Hey!  That's what stadium athletics are all about, no?  I loves me some hockey but I'll be damned if I'll sit for two-plus hours in 30-degree temps.

Signs O' the Times

Just in from running the day's errands, which included a stop at the cleaners to pick up the wash'n'fold (Bless You My Children!) and some dry cleaning.  And then there's this:

That's a Great Good Thing, innit?  No "Happy Holidays" BS here.

Added, 12 minutes later:  Yet another perfect pour.

Dang, I'm good at this... practice does indeed make perfect (pours).

Heh

From the usual source.

Heh

An occasional correspondent sends this along:

Siamese twins walk into a bar in Canada and park themselves on a bar stool.
 
One of them says to the bartender, "Don't mind us; we're joined at the hip.  I'm John, he's Jim.  Two Molson Canadian beers, draft please."

The bartender, feeling slightly awkward, tries to make polite conversation while pouring the beers. "Been on holiday yet, lads?"

"Off to England next month," says John.  "We go to England every year, rent a car and drive for miles.  Don't we, Jim?"  Jim agrees.

"Ah, England!" says the bartender.  "Wonderful country... the history, the beer, the culture..."

"Nah, we don't like that British stuff," says John.  "Hamburgers and Molson's beer, that's us, eh Jim? And we can't stand the English - they're so aloof and stingy."

"So why keep going to England?" asks the bartender.

"It's the only chance Jim gets to drive."

Heh.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Witness:

Jim could get his motoring ya-yas out in Japan, Thailand, or any number of current or former British Commonwealth countries.  I got the above image from The Wiki, which has a fascinating article on the subject here.  The history of driving on the right is a lot more extensive than one would think.

I'll add that driving a LHD car in a RHD world is a major PITA, especially if you're driving alone.  I'm lucky to have survived three years of driving that way while in Ol' Blighty... it's a wonder the right side of my car wasn't taken off on any number of B-roads as I edged out into the right lane to see if it was clear to pass a slow-moving lorry or bus.  That said, at least I wasn't driving a full-sized American car like some of my friends.  "Yank Tanks" and smaller British roads weren't exactly suited to one another.