It's Here
From the windows in the lobby Jeff and I looked down on Evanston and saw the blizzard descending on the north end of the valley like The Nothing in Neverending Story, a juggernaut engulfing the horizon and then the cowering town. The road north to Jeff’s was nearly obliterated by a wall of white from earth to sky, sloping between the Overthrust and the hill where the construction is just being finished on the new and improved airport. The wind was slamming something around on the roof like a poltergeist, but there was no way we were going up there; a man wouldn’t last five minutes in that wind. Weather.com says it’s 20˚ (F) but feels like 2˚ and claims visibility is .3 miles. I’ve settled in to wait it out with a cup of Mom's imitation wassail (hot Tang with enough ground cinnamon to stun a yak and a few secret ingredients- she's the original beverage innovator). We’re supposed to isolate that middle reservoir tomorrow, which entails turning underground valves using ungainly T-shaped valve keys made from rusty iron. I’m digging out the flannel-lined jeans I cross-country ski in and Grandpa’s old orange snow machine parka, and as soon as it clears I’m going to Abracadabra to book a winter’s worth of tanning in the old Wolff box that seems unable to burn me. I’ll never make it through to May without some artificial UV exposure.
posted by A at
5:55 PM
4 Comments:
I'm feeling chilled on your behalf and thinking that now I need to make a run for cinnamon to go with the Tang you persuaded me to buy last winter. That combination sounds too incongruous to pass up.
Not for nothing, but "the Overthrust" itself sounds like something from fantasy or science fiction.
Or porn.
(I'm sorry. I couldn't stop myself.)
Yeah, Overthrust sounds like a last name for a stage name. (Sorry, couldn't help myself either, maybe it's the fact that The Nothing has invaded here too and it's beginning to make me crazy...)
OMG! Porn, ha. Brent, you keep skewing the way I look at my life, you know. (SCMODS, anyone?) It sure is funnier your way. The Overthrust is one of those odd geographical formations, a broad cliff that just comes up out of the flat earth at a slant, and thrusts out over the valley and the river. It's very strange. You'll love the fake wassail. But keep in mind that cinnamon doesn't dissolve, so don't take that last swallow.
I think that's winter's new name- The Nothing. By the time I pried the passenger side door of my truck open this morning, I was crying (due to my fury at the stuck door) and the tears were freezing on my cheeks. I had to actually kick the driver's side door open from the inside. I turned the heat on full blast and went back in for fifteen minutes, and when I came out I saw that the little crack on the left side now stretched the full length of the windshield I put in after I hit the owl two winters ago (he made tofu out of that windshield, but it held together). I know it's a fact of life that you have to get a new windshield in this state at least once every two years, but it isn't fair. The little crack I got the first weekend I had it, going to Mom's over the Fontonelle construction.
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