I generally limit daytime TV watching, because frankly my pea-sized brain can’t afford too much more atrophy.

Today was the exception (maybe because I skipped a big pot of tea when I got up to see if lowering caffeine will become a more conventional bedtime).

Dr. Phil is featuring loveable educator Dr. Bill Cosby exhorting parents to not fuck up and kids to do something.

I know if I was a chubby white girl (and don’t get me wrong, I am) with no friends and a serious TV jones, the Cos’ kissing away my tears and telling me to change would be the juice for my new and improved life. Dr. Phil had some good advice for the parents, um, turn off the fucking TV. He is sporting for a personal trainer and, I think, is going to help her make friends or something, which is fun.

Now they are profiling a Black kid with a hard-working mom and jailed dad, who has stayed in school and not joined a gang. News at 11.

Seriously, and I know I might be veering from the liberal left party line I generally choose, what the fuck are Phil and Bill selling by suggesting there are almost no good kids growing up in Black families. (But, lowermybills.com is ponying up some cake for his college tuition, ’cause he’s “a Cosby kid.”)

I like Bill Cosby, I think he’s funny and I respect that he is educated and speaks out in the community from whence he came.

But, maybe the cynic in me is feeling cranky today. They’re alternating the inspiring change your life rhetoric aimed at the kids, the children, our kids, with plugs for the Fat Albert movie, now out on DVD. Hmmm, perhaps the Cos’ is multitasking. Afterall, he’s quite educated.

Oh, fuck. The show’s over, and underneath the chair of everyone in the audience is a copy of the Fat Albert DVD and Dr. Phil’s book.

I went for a pretty long walk yesterday. I like it when the town shuts down, and the streets look all old-timey from only having bundled up clusters of people and almost no cars.

Cambridge Street (which is most often gridlocked) looking west toward Inman Square and the sunset

No “Live Poultry Fresh Killed” yesterday

I put all my pictures from the snowy weekend in an album. You can either go to photos.dee-rob.com and choose the first album (with a catch name like “Snow, January 2005) or you can go just directly to that album here.

There’s a couple of the surreal, moonscape, artsy, bullshit view I like, too.

By the way, the shit that was open by 4 p.m. yesterday when I was strolling I think gives a little insight into the world. Throughout East Cambridge, the one constant in emporia open for business was liquor stores and/or quickie marts that sell beer and wine. Maybe it was the Pats-Steelers game or maybe it was what began completely clear during the years I spent in Syracuse, NY. There ain’t nothing to do in that much snow except drink away the boredom.

Socio-economically speaking and without picking out any one group, along Cambridge Street it also seemed like the non-European, ethnic restaurants were pulling to get there sidewalks and doors cleared for dinner. Thinner margins or more industrious?

Then I got to Inman Square, and a lot of stuff was open there, the S&S Deli, Bukowski’s, Inman Hardware, 1369 Cofffehouse, all the liquor stores and a few of the other markets. I figure that’s ’cause dirty hippies don’t know any better than to stay home and drink. Besides, it’s probably warmer at the 1369 than their bohemian, art and grafitti-soaked, patchouli-stinking lairs.

I gots myself a latte, surrounded by my people.

Remember this picture of the car across the street from my door?

Well, here it is almost eight hours later:

Almost gone.

Here’s the front yard (and I use the term “yard” loosely in describing the foot-wide space). The drifts almost are up to the normal height (like waist-high or something) fence.

My street:

It’s still snowing, so maybe I’ll get the three feet that would make it interesting.

(By the way, I probably should have brightened or color-corrected or something today’s pictures. But, it’s a snow day, and I haven’t had my tea.)

Maybe this time the snow hype is catching up to reality (or vice versa).

I took these pictures at about 11:30 p.m.

You get a sense of a pretty good storm, but it’s still your basic January in New England.

Now, at about 4 a.m. (Don’t ask why I’m up. Among other things, I got caught up in a stupid movie on cable.) Anyway, the white shit is still flying and we got these pics.

Going to be a fun time first finding your car and then digging out the right one.

Here’s what I faced when I opened the front door. I’m guessing over a foot right there on the porch.

Since I don’t really have any where to go, provided I buy some food shortly, I will be excited to see the possible 30 inches predicated. Almost three feet is cool, no matter what you are measuring.

So I got up this morning and read a few news things on-line and noted some shows being cancelled and thought, “hmmm, better look out the window.” I thought that, because everything I read seemed to evoke snow armeggedon.

I look out the goddamned window, and nothing. NOTHING. Not even a flake yet in front of my house.

It drives me nuts when there is full on weather hype for something that hasn’t hit us yet.

The worst of it is, I have no food in the house, because I ate it all. Meaning, through bad planning on my part, I will be going to the store when the snow starts and all of the folks heeding the blizzard warning will be buying toilet paper and powdered milk and other items for those under siege.

The toilet paper hording always cracks me up this time of year. It always makes me wonder if the beleaguered purchasers usually like to keep themselves on a short leash and only buy a roll at a time during fine weather. Or, maybe they expect bad results from the bunker-type food they are buying for an emergency.

All I know is if they are shopping in a Cambridge grocery store, they probably live in the city. And, spending most winters out of 40 in New England have taught me something. That Charmin double roll out a last you through most situations, you ain’t got to stock up.

I’ll be shocked beyond belief if there isn’t a store open by Monday where you can stock up on all your butt wipe needs.

This house was the one in which Pat and the rest of her family grew up many moons ago.

This morning the Boston Globehad a picture. But, I missed it for the link.

I gotta a nice exciting chunka change deposited in the old bank account. I believe the end times are upon us, though, as of that last deposit.

Time’s to get me back to working and keeping the devil and poverty at bay.

This post is an inside joke and who knows if the inside jokee will read it. But, it’s been a while since I’ve used this website to be nauseatingly cute with my boyo.

The bright side of my doing so, however is that it is Friday night. So, my bored friends with office jobs, such as the one whose name rhymes with Biz, will not be reading in the morning at work. Thus, they will not start the day vomiting coffee because of my treacly bad self.

On top of M. offering a quick line (see above), I’m feeling very Sally Field. Not, embarrassing, I slept with Burt Reynolds Sally, but the one who won some Oscars and an Emmy and shit. “You like me, you really like me.”

Guess I had a pretty good week of catching up with people I’d like to call friends (and who would probably let me.) Nothing like planning a move cross country to actually motivate you and other people to actually do shit together.

Other than that, I’m just feeling warm all over because I got the Harvey Double Hungs all around me. It dawned on me this week (as the temperatures have hovered around 10 degrees Fahrenheit) that I ain’t never lived in a place with insulation and good windows all at the same time. I’m used to the sound of glass rattling in the panes and wood shaking everywhere.

Now’s all I got to worry about is the CO coming up from the heater and strangling the life out of me.