Oh, Mr. Weatherman...Wrong YET again!

Well, we didn’t really get ICE STORM 2011 here last night. I’m a little disappointed. I know areas around us got a lot more ice and the areas north of us got a fair bit of snow but our fair city got a little freezing rain that wasn’t really enough to even make the pavement that slippery.

I’m not disappointed about the ice. As I said, thick and heavy freezing rain is scary to both drive in and walk in. I’m more disappointed that we didn’t get our Weather Event.

Also, a lot of my Facebook friends who live in areas further north and west of us got either snow days or ice days from work today. I’m jealous of that and I don’t mind admitting it.
The problem with having the perk of living six minutes away from the office by car is that…I live six minutes away from the office by car. I have a have three left turns and a right and I’m at my office building. Things could be worse. It means I can run home to the pups at lunch, grab some food and get some puppy love before I go back to work.

It also means that I have no excuse to call into work unless there’s a level 3 snow emergency and you can get a ticket for being out on the road.

It’s a trade-off. It also means that when the weather is ropey, even though it’s scary for the short distance I have to drive, I only have a short distance. I’ve learned already where the areas of my ‘commute’ are the worst and so I’ve come to know where to be most cautious on my drive. Nevertheless, there are some days that would be nice if they were snow days. I blame Facebook for all the comments of my snow/icebound friends who were settling in with hot chocolate or pancakes or a movie or a book. Some of them still had to work from home but speaking from experience, some days, it’s quite nice to work from home while you’re wearing your pajamas.

Of course, I say that but I’m not actually the pajama-wearing-while-I-work type. I adore wearing my pajamas. However, my brain has this rather strict schedule about wearing pajamas. During the winter, it’s ok to take a shower or bath and put them on quite early…as long as it’s dark outside. Thus, in the winter it’s perfectly reasonable to get in from work, do some necessary things and then take a shower and be in my pajamas by 7 pm. In the summer, however, when it’s still light at 7 p.m., I cannot wear pajamas. It just feels…weird. The mornings are a little different. As much as I’d like to stay in my pajamas all day, once it gets passed 9 a.m., I feel rather odd wearing pajamas. You know in a dream where you realize you’re in the middle of a public place and you forgot to get dressed and put on your makeup? Being in my pajamas past 9:30 a.m. feels a little like that to me, even in my own living room.

So, that’s why I can’t work from home wearing my pajamas. I’m sure you don’t really care but I thought I’d share anyway.

Our little ice ‘storm’ last night wasn’t terribly newsworthy. It was enough to rim the trees with a thin casing of ice and enough to cause people who parked outside to have to chip their way into their cars but that was it. By the time we went to work, salt had been put down and the roads were travelworthy.

Also when I left for work, our forecast was for the temperatures to warm up, the freezing rain to turn to regular rain and eventually, overnight, turn to snow.

So, when I came out of work this evening and almost fell on my bottom, I was a little surprised to discover that it was raining heavily and freezing when it hits the ground. This, for those of you not used to it, is called freezing rain not regular rain. The temperatures did NOT warm up and thus, as I write this, the world outside is now encased with ice and looking a little lethal. It’s now supposed to turn to snow rather than regular rain.

What I find interesting is the forecast I heard was about seven hours before I came out of work. How is it possible to be quite so wrong about the weather, particularly when the people telling us it’s going to be warm make their living predicting the weather? I’m not the first person to say it and I won’t be the last but if most of us were as wrong in our jobs as weathermen and women, we’d get fired. They simply shrug and say “nature has a mind of its own.”This is true except, well, they have technology and gadgets and training that’s supposed to predict the weather accurately. If nature has a mind of its own, then why do we have weather reports? So, this evening, I’m now tempted to turn on the news and see if they’re back to the excited ICE STORM 2011 or they’re sheepishly reporting the weather as it happens? Given that most of us weren’t prepared for such an icy deluge, I think they have a right to be at least a little sheepish.

Still, we listen to the weather reports even though they’re frequently wrong. We care about the weather a lot because it governs so much of our life. It’s fascinating, really. People can always find something to talk about in the weather.

My dad in particular likes the weather. He has one of those fancy indoor weather gadgets that tells you absolutely everything you want to know from wind chill to barometric pressure. He likes to inform us of dramatic things such as “the temperature….is dropping.” If there’s a weather event predicted, he frequently checks his weather gadget. If it’s a winter weather event, my mother shrinks with each passing moment into a little ball in her chair because she simply despises winter. I think, if she had her way, she’d put a paper bag on her head and pretend winter wasn’t happening. Or, more likely, she’d hibernate because, honestly, who wants to put a bag on their head? I’ve tried it. It’s not comfortable. Also, it’s quite hard to get the eyeholes and nosehole to line up so you can actually see and breathe.

I digress. Again. Sorry, mum, by the way. I didn’t mean to divulge your secret desire to be a Mrs. Paper Bag head.

I think my mother should embrace winter. She should build a snowman and turn her face up to the falling snow and let it tickle her face the way I do. If she could just turn that frown upside down, she’d realize snow is lovely.

More likely, though, she’d tell me that it was cold and that there was no way she could like the stuff. Everyone’s different, I suppose. She likes summer which is my least favourite season.

Still, this time of year, the weather is unpredictable. When even the weather forecasters have to come up with alternate forecasts because they don’t know what the weather is going to actually do, you know that they can’t really predict anything. I suppose this is why they were so very wrong this morning. Last night, at least, they gave two forecasts for what could happen. Perhaps if they gave us multiple forecasts every day, just in case something changes, they’d be right more often.

But that still wouldn’t be very helpful, would it? Ah well, you live and learn. Stay safe if you’re reading this from an icy/snowy clime!

Happy Wednesday!

Impulses of Rain and Morning Reflections on Lestat...

I'm giving up on weather reports. I've said similar things before but I think this time, it's time. I think even the Fox 19 weather man is giving up on trying to get it right and instead is concentrating on really pretty ways to say he doesn't know. We've supposedly supposed to have had three days of thunderstorms so far. So far, we've had three days of cloying humidity, beating-hot sun and puffy white clouds. I think it might have rained a little here where I work but where I live, there's been no rain.

Today, the weatherman said, "There might be little impulses of rain throughout the day depending on where you are."

I found this to be rather hilarious. First of all "Impulses of Rain" sounds like either an Indie rock band or an Oprah-esque novel. Second of all, to me, what it really sounded like he was saying was that it might rain. Somewhere. If it's not raining where I am, it might going to rain somewhere else.

I noticed on Monday, he was rather gung-ho about the storms, we were definitely going to get them. As the week is progressing, he's looking a little more dejected as though he can't believe he has to say the same thing when he knows that he's probably wrong.

I suppose I can't blame him. He's probably not doing his own meteorological reports. He's probably pulling them off the wire. So it's not his fault and I should probably feel sorry for him because he knows that he's probably wrong. It has to be hard on your self-esteem.

So, while I await for the pattern of thunderstorms I've been told to expect, I'm now currently squinting a little because the sun is now pouring in through my basement window. Sometimes, I feel a little like I'm below deck of a ship because we have this little glass blocks above us that are supposed to feel like windows but do little more than let us see if it's daylight or night. Unless it's the morning and then we sit for a short period of times, trying to ignore the glare as the sun rises up into the sky.

It's one of those days that needs a big storm. The humidity is out of control and it's making everyone feel sluggish and bad-tempered. I'm not just projecting. I think there's definitely something in the air on days like this that affects us as humans. The pressure builds in the atmosphere and we feel it.

I know I'm trying to fight the urge to be snappy and irritable. I'm not the only one; I've noticed my coworkers feeling the same way. It's silly, for me, the things that seem to put me in a bad mood. On my way to work this morning, I passed by a gas station and as I did so, a car decided to pull out and cut me off, forcing me to slam on my brakes. Not only did she cut me off and scare the crap out of me, she decided she didn't like the fact that I had to tailgate her as a result of her sudden movement and rather than speed up, she chose to drive at 25 miles an hour until I pulled back.

I confess, when people tailgate me, this is the exact same thing I do. I slow right down and irritate them to the point that they sheepishly give me some space. It works almost all of the time. Then I accelerate back up to a good, sensible law-abiding speed. They can either pass or follow suit.

However, with the girl this morning, it wasn't like I had any choice! She cut me off with such a short amount of space that by the time I'd braked, I was a little too close to her for comfort.

I'm hoping this is just a bad week for commuting, not a sign of things to come. Next week, the kids around here start back up with school which means the added bonus of morning school buses. I'm not sure if that will affect me but, if it does, you'll hear about it.

I think the reason I get so frustrated with bad drivers in the mornings is that, as I've mentioned, my commute is my meditation time, my time to just relax, reflect and enjoy the beautiful country. I like it to be a reliable thing. With bad drivers factored in, my reflection time is considerably reduced. I don't like that.

Still, I better get used to it. At least this morning, until I got cut off, I did get to reflect. Sadly, my thoughts were not terribly deep, they were, actually, rather shallow and dumb. You see, yesterday, I heard that, in the wake of the current vampire trend, Hollywood is now considering reviving Anne Rice's greatest vampire creation: The Vampire Lestat.

As I mentioned in several prior blogs, I hold Anne Rice up to be one of the best vampire writers out there, at least in her earlier books. She was an original creator of the romantic vampire, the sexy, 'rockstar' vampire, the brooding vampire. Without Anne Rice, we'd have no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no Twilight and no Sookie Stackhouse novels.

The problem I have is that Hollywood doesn't seem to 'get' Lestat. This was clear when they cast Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire. While I think Tom Cruise tried really hard he....wasn't Lestat. Hollywood tried again with Queen of the Damned, casting a more unknown actor, Stuart Townsend, as Lestat. He was closer but the film was so terrible, it wasn't worth watching.

Now....it's Robert Downey Jr. who has seems to be wanting to play the character. I love Robert Downey Jr. I think he's an amazing actor. I've liked him for many years, from his earliest roles in Less than Zero to his recent comeback as one of Hollywood's best. I still think one of my favourite roles of his was in Heart and Souls, a cute romantic comedy that still makes me smile. He was good in such formulaic crap as Only You. He was good in Natural Born Killers. He's just a good actor.

Recently, I've been excited to see him play roles like Tony Stark in Iron Man. It suits him and he's fun to watch.

But...I think it's safe to say, dear Robert, back away from Lestat. Back away.

You see, Lestat is immortal because, well, duh, he's a vampire. He's also written to be devilishly handsome with a side of sociopathy. He's also...quite young.

Robert Downey Jr. is not as young. That's why he's as good as he is. I love him as Tony Stark, the rich, attractive business man with a world-weary streak and a penchant towards alcoholism. I think he's going to make an excellent Sherlock Holmes, his dry with and deadpan humour perfect for the role.

But...Lestat? Really? I think, Mr. Downey Jr. that maybe it's time to take a step back. We know you're the hottest actor in Hollywood right now. We know you're very talented and are picking great roles but I think this time, you can take a pass.

I just can't see Lestat being in his forties. It just doesn't work for me. The closest I've ever seen to the Lestat I pictured in the books is Eric from True Blood. Eric is very Lestat-ian. He's ruthless, sexy, cruel and funny. But...I like him as Eric. I'm just saying that I think he's the closest the screen has come to getting Lestat right and he's not even playing Lestat.

So, perhaps you can see why the Robert Downey Jr. picture in my mind as Lestat is a wee bit...ridiculous. I'd like to be convinced otherwise but I'm rather afraid that once again, the attempt to bring Anne Rice's novels to life is going to fall a little flat in the attempt to make it a big Hollywood attempt.

Wow...I'm rambly today. I apologize, once more. As I've said, sometimes when I sit down to blog, I don't always know what I'm going to say. Today, it rather got away from me. That's what happens when I don't get smooth morning reflection time. Here's to tomorrow and hoping for an easier commute.

Happy Wednesday!