Snow Witches In Your Area!

I am not completely (or even mostly) recovered, but I decided to get out of bed, put real clothes on, and walk around some today. My chest congestion is lingering even as runny nose and burning eyes improve, and it is possible for a weakened individual to contract hypostatic pneumonia just by lying horizontal in bed for too long.

That all by itself was motivation to stop living in my robe. I am not running any marathons (not when it’s -5F outside) but I’m fighting back the chaos in my inbox and eating real food on a regular basis.

And I was watching Tom Skilling this morning on the WGN cable feed to get a sense for the precedented (I froze my 14-year-old ass in the precedent) but still impressive snowstorm about to descend on Chicago. I found myself paying attention to something I typically ignore: realtime closed captioning. Carol had turned it on last night while she was grinding the Pack’s collective toenails with her very effective but noisy cordless Dremel. Captioning does help in noisy environments, as anyone who’s watched TV in a crowded fitness center will testify.

I soon discovered a wonderful source of found humor. When one of the announcers said, “If you go out in the snow, please dress appropriately!” the caption read IF YOU GO OUT IN THE SNOW PEAS DRESS APPROPRIATELY. Later on we had a Web cam view from POSOLE, OKLAHOMA, where the snow is coming down as thick as…hominy? (I don’t recall what the audio actually said.)

But I laughed until I coughed (not that that’s hard) when the announcer said “…of the snow which is in your area” and the caption read …OF THE SNOW WITCHES IN YOUR AREA.

Eek!

So don’t blame the Jet Stream. Or moist Gulf air. Or global warming. It’s the witches, people. WGN said so. Quick, Aslan, the Flit!