{"id":443,"date":"2005-01-24T22:52:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-25T03:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=443"},"modified":"2005-12-06T07:42:31","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T12:42:31","slug":"back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/back","title":{"rendered":"Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flight from St. Louis was delayed for a while today, but I got in safe and sound.<\/p>\n

Also, the extra time allowed me to finish The System of the World<\/a>, completing Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. It was a heck of a read (started the first book<\/a> at the end of September), with plenty of material to chew on. My brain’s percolating away, and I hope to write about the books sometime in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

I was worried, as I closed in on my home, that the snow would be drifted up 30 inches high in my driveway. I was in no mood to start shoveling around 8:30 pm, which is when I was going to reach my house.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the snow wasn’t as bad up here as I’d feared. It was only 8-10 inches high, and pretty powdery. My gold standard for messed-up weather is the blizzard of 1996, in which we got pasted with about 30-35 inches, so tonight’s level was officially No Big Deal.<\/p>\n

I pulled into a neighbor’s house and started shoveling the mouth of my driveway, which was much higher and denser. Soon, my neighbor came out with his snowblower. I insisted that he didn’t need to, and that I’d just roll my Element up the driveway once I cleared this part out. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was awfully kind, as he cleaned up the entire driveway, and made me realize that I really<\/em> need to buy myself a nice snowblower.<\/p>\n

So that’s about it. No witticisms, polemicisms, or politicisms. But I will share some pictures from the weekend:<\/p>\n

A surprise birthday party<\/a> for Shannon (the blonde on the left). <\/p>\n

Doug & Brewster<\/a>, the latter being an affectionate dog.<\/p>\n

My beautiful niece<\/a>, Liat.<\/p>\n

My beautiful niece, Liat, who has dressed me up<\/a> in several different scarves. It was even worse than it looks. Laugh while you can; you’ll get yours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flight from St. Louis was delayed for a while today, but I got in safe and sound. Also, the extra time allowed me to finish The System of the World, completing Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. It was a heck of a read (started the first book at the end of September), with plenty of material … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Back”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4C7K-back","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4190,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/its-only-inches-on-the-reel-to-reel","url_meta":{"origin":443,"position":0},"title":"It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel","author":"Gil","date":"July 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm starting to think my garage was an annex for the Museum of Jurassic Technology: This reel-to-reel unit is one of those early models that was composed of dwarf-star matter, weighing in around 9 trillion tons.","rel":"","context":"In "Found in the Garage"","block_context":{"text":"Found in the Garage","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/found-in-the-garage"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":445,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/dodging-bullets-like-keanu","url_meta":{"origin":443,"position":1},"title":"Dodging Bullets Like Keanu","author":"Gil","date":"January 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The official VM girlfriend & I are off in St. Louis, visiting family (mine) and friends (hers). While we've been pissed off about the weather here (15 degrees, insane winds), it's nothing compared to the stuff we narrowly missed at home. To quote Weather.com's severe weather announcement:...NORTHERN FAIRFIELD CT-NORTHERN NEW\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1507,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/dodging-bullets-like-keanu-part-2","url_meta":{"origin":443,"position":2},"title":"Dodging Bullets Like Keanu, Part 2","author":"Gil","date":"May 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Or, \"Missed by that much.\" Seriously, this was a 40' or 50' tall tree, and it managed to just miss the house on its way down. I'll probably post followup pix from when I bust out the trusty electric chainsaw this weekend . . . (Update: turns out the falling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":758,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/seasonal-anxiety","url_meta":{"origin":443,"position":3},"title":"Seasonal Anxiety","author":"Gil","date":"December 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Big snow on Thursday night and Friday morning meant I was working at home yesterday. I took care of a lot of my magazine stuff (getting advertisers' profile-pages approved for the year-end issue) in my home office while about 8 inches of snow piled up outside. At one point, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":988,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/megaton","url_meta":{"origin":443,"position":4},"title":"Megaton","author":"Gil","date":"June 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Foreign Policy looks at six megacities (pop. 10+ mil.) and why they might collapse. Evidently, Mumbai's weather is so bad, the city even gets hailstorms of criticism. (Thanks. I'll be here all week.) But seriously: 37 inches of rain in 24 hours?","rel":"","context":"In "Urban issues"","block_context":{"text":"Urban issues","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/urban-issues"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1472,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/yet-more-great-news","url_meta":{"origin":443,"position":5},"title":"Yet more great news!","author":"Gil","date":"April 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In recent weeks, we've had a baby announcement and an engagement to celebrate, here at fashionable VM estates! It's time for another baby! This time, the newborn in question is Addison Marion, daughter of Stacy & John K.! Congrats! (20.5 inches, 8 lbs., 1 oz., for those of you keeping\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}