In what is shaping up to be the Worst Winter Ever we all stayed home, because all schools were closed (including OSU). Of course, J. teaches T Th so the snow day gave him precisely nothing (save for less time today, since he had to shovel a driveway). Eli & Gideon pined to help their parents while shoveling the driveway, and I rewarded them by taking them over to their Bubbie and Papa's to help me shovel out their house. They soon learned that shoveling is not an activity that should ever compel desire, as we spent the next 2 hours shoveling 8 inches of a remarkably heavy 7-8 inch slush-ice-snow mixture. We made it home somehow without requiring any EMTs and now save for the fact that B. can hardly move a muscle, all is good. It is good because we are inside. Inside is dry and has heat. Outside is never good, unless you are watching it through a window. I think we can all agree to this principle. In any case E & G agree that playing in the snow is, "vastly overrated."   

Today was surreal . . . we all did our daily things in daily mundane fashion even as it was also the best day ever. This morning driving to school, J. complained that it was 9 degrees and Eli rightly said, "Who cares. We have President Obama." B. and G. were able to watch all the pomp and circumstance (G. at school, and B. through cnn facebook feed and fuzzy network). Poor J. had to miss it for classes and graduate student mock interviews. Poor E. had to miss the address for, can you believe it, bowling. I will quote him again: "I miss history. Why? For Bowling. For Bowling for f**** sake." These obstacles aside, we are still, as G. said when he greeted me after school, "under President Obama." Best. Day. Ever.

Wintertime is taking its toll in the form of B. teaching G. what the term "belligerent" means (to describe Gideon's grumpy tone) and B. instructing E. (very belligerently ) as to the extreme annoyance of a child sucking on a deflated balloon animal next to her while she is attempts to transcribe 18th century handwriting and figuring out add line numbers to microsoft word documents. I also indentured Eli to the candlemaker, J. for 11 years. This somehow does not seem the appropriate way to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. We did, however, watch the speech, ate greens and will read Martin's Big Words. 

JBEG is trying to decide which is most (or least) pleasant: 0 degree or 100 degree weather. We are undecided as we really experience our 5 degree day. In the midst of the frigid temperatures and what was yesterday the platonic snowflakes (and is now disgusting heaps of frozen gray slush), Eli did the family proud, placing third in his school's National Geographic Geography Bee. He was a little disappointed they didn't ask about mountain ranges in Mongolia and rivers in India, focusing questions on the domestic front. I have one: what is the average temperature in January in Columbus, OH? Answer: it should not be 5 degrees.) 

After a long hiatus, JBEG is getting our public digital museum in order. After all, what other domestic unit has so much love for digital collections, literal museums and so little love for privacy? We may live in squalor, but we will have a historical record of selfsame. Today is work day: e.g. stay home, read, fold, cook, clean, study, write. In sum, the best day ever!