clearly our weather is suffering from bipolar disorder in shiny things

Especially today. It was quite temperate when I left for work this morning -- like nearly 50! But it was pouring rain. POURING. At 10:30 I had to hike across campus for a meeting. The temperature had dropped nearly 20 degrees... and it was snowing. Since I'd left for work in a much milder weather pattern, I'd skipped my usual down jacket + down vest (that I usually wear all day because it's like Antarctica in here), and just wore a light raincoat. So on the plus side, didn't get wet; on the minus side, froze. Solid.

By 2:00 the sun was out, and again it was nearly 50. WTF, Weather??!! Right now there's not a cloud in the sky, and the sun is in fact blazing through my window, making me think I really need to bring some sunscreen in for these late afternoons, at least until the trees get their leaves and block the sun.

Basically, since 7 this morning, it has poured rain, been nearly 50 degrees, dropped down to 30 degrees, poured snow, went back up to nearly 50 degrees, and became cloudless and sunny. Oh, it was quite windy early too. Not now. It's like a week of weather rolled into 8 hours.

I do think we are actually in for a pleasant weekend, though, which is REALLY exciting. After all these massively unpleasant weeks, and weekends spent totally inside, I could SO use a pleasant weekend. We all could.

Of course this could not be the end of our horrid winter...word on the street is the Polar Blast is returning next week. I'd never even heard of a Polar Blast until this winter, and this will be our THIRD Polar Blast. It's been the coldest winter on record for us so far. And one of the least snowy, I think, despite our blizzard last week.

And speaking of the blizzard, I'll post some pictures of the walk Baker B and I took at the Viaduct last Sunday. When it actually warmed up enough to at least poke our heads out of the house. The Viaduct is a very impressive bridge up on the Parkway, that goes around Grandfather Mountain and is kind of alarmingly suspended out in space. Ordinarily you can't walk over it, but when the Parkway is closed for snow it's open for walkers.

It is absolutely gorgeous up there. Even in the winter. The views are breathtaking.

That's Baker B way up the road. I was having trouble with my camera settings and told him to stop glaring impatiently and go on. Oddly enough, this was the ONLY spot where it was all that snowy. Despite our 10 inches or so.

There were cross country skiers everywhere. I have never seen so many cross country skiers. I've actually never seen more than a couple around here period-- we don't normally have the kind of snow that is conducive to cross country skiing. And this snow was not one of the conducive ones, at least not by Sunday when it had melted off. But apparently the cross country skiers did not get the "not conducive" memo, because they were absolutely everywhere. In fact, Baker B and I and one other guy were the ONLY walkers. Everyone else was skiing. Or trying to.

That picture there is about as good as it got for the skiers. Mostly they were either shuffling along in a path of snow maybe a foot wide, or giving up and taking their skis off and walking. We felt very smug. It looked like no fun at ALL.

Here's a whole bunch of them, annoyed and snowless.

We were passing them all by, and they were giving us "DAMN I wish I was walking!!" looks.

That's another bridge- not as big and impressive as the Viaduct.

I'm jumping all around confusingly. This one IS the Viaduct:

A huge black bird posed for me. We thought it was a raven, but Noko will know for sure what it is -

Even the bare, usually-depressing trees are gorgeous:

Okay, enough. I have got to catch up reading -- apparently everyone has been energized by the Death of OD; I had SIXTY ONE updated bookmarks yesterday!! It's good, though, to see so much activity. I'll just never catch up!