Tues. Feb. 24, 2026: Storm Aftermath
image courtesy of wal_172619 from Pixabay Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Waxing Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Cloudy and cold
Happy new week, and the last week of February. I hope you had a great weekend.
I’m so delighted for many of the Olympic athletes (see the exception below), and I love how many of the women are unapologetically themselves. Many of them are young, and starting from such a grounded place gives them so much room for their wonderful futures. I hope they are changing the narrative of athletes who have to trade happiness and full lives because they are only dedicated to their sport.
The coverage has been less than stellar. I’m not impressed with the “journalists” there, most of them anyway, and the celebrity-leaning stuff. I also feel there’s not enough international coverage. It’s the one time we get to see all the athletes, so let’s see all of them.
I ran an errand right after breakfast on Friday morning, and made it back before the snow started. And snow it did! I let my friend know how bad it was here, and that it was the right call not to go that afternoon to the Clark. The storm hadn’t yet hit her, so she was worried she’s cancelled for nothing. I assured her it was the right decision. It switched over to sleet in the afternoon. Not fun.
Something I ordered arrived. I’d come upon it unexpectedly, and it was called a “book” but it’s really a pamphlet. It was published in 1980, by the Hestia Art Collective, about the mural they painted in Northampton depicting 300 years of women’s history there. You can see the mural here. I’ve driven past it several times to-ing and fro-ing in the area, such as going to Hampshire College for the writing sessions or out to Hadley. I didn’t know much about it. You can read more about it here. I’m glad I have this little pamphlet about it, because it’s hard to get, but I wish the description had been more accurate. I was expecting a big book! But it still gives me a great jumping off point for further research on both the artists and the women they depicted. The mural is 3000 feet.
The only real “work” I did on Friday was to finish the book for review, write and submit the review, and grab another book. I also watched the next lecture for the DNA Forensics class and took notes.
But it was a very quiet day of reading and planning and playing with cats.
Saturday morning, when I woke up, it was snowing again, this time a heavy, wet snow. Ick. I had toyed with the idea of running some errands on foot, but no, thanks.
I spent a few hours in the morning working on a family chart/timeline for one of the most important characters in the Nina Bell books, other than Nina herself. It was a lot of fun, and a bit too much math. I screwed up on a few things, but figured it out.
I knew I “should” go dig out the car, but I just didn’t want to.
I did housework, because there’s always housework. And puttering, because there’s always something to do. The light wasn’t good enough to sew, and I don’t have the right task lighting to just do it no matter what (something I need to address).
I read a literary mystery with an unreliable narrator, and I’m on the fence about the book. It was very well written. I’m not a fan of the unreliable narrator device, because I usually see through it pretty fast and get impatient. Unreliable narrators often feel like the author messing with the reader to mess with them, not because it’s the best way to tell the story. I figured this one out on p. 90 of a 364-page book. I still read the whole thing, and the big “surprise” at the end (an additional twist that surprised the unreliable narrator) was also something I figured out. The writing was excellent, so I want to read something else by this author. I respected and appreciated the book on a skill level. I just didn’t enjoy it. Which is a weird thing to say about a book, but there we are.
I cooked a comfort food chicken and noodles dinner. Tessa has decided that her favorite place to sit now is on the tarot reading cloth on the big worktable in my office. When she’s not supervising me doing other things. From that perch, she can supervise me better when I’m at my desk. Of course, at one point on Saturday, I came into my office and found her sitting on top of the computer, so. . .fortunately, it’s a laptop and was closed, and I’d put on the cover I use to keep dust off when I’m not using it.
It snowed most of Saturday, although there wasn’t much accumulation. We got an incoming blizzard warning. The weather app said we could get anywhere from 1 inch to 20 inches, which is not really helpful, but Sunday morning, it seemed like a lot of places planned to stay shut yesterday. Which is a good thing, but puts me back a few days on errands. Still, it’s weather, so we deal. Spectrum sent out an alert on Saturday to expect the internet to go down, which could also put me behind on the ghostwriting. But I’d gotten a little ahead, so maybe it will even out.
There was a lovely, anticipatory quiet early on Sunday morning. It was kind of wonderful.
Once again, it was too dark to stitch. I re-read the play version of WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, because that show is one Nina’s working on during the events of BETTING MAN. It had been years since I read it, and I had to figure out which character in BETTING MAN performs which character in the play. So that was fun.
It snowed off and on during the day, and I spent some time reading Mary Oliver’s poetry and watching the snow, being cat furniture, and also re-reading a book.
With the incoming blizzard, Broadway shows actually shut down their evening performances. That’s pretty rare.
Here, by 8 PM, the streets had been plowed down to asphalt, and there was a lull before the next band started in. Everyone cooperated, and the streets were empty. It was eerie with anticipation.
I woke up a couple of times in the night. It was snowing, and the streetlights reflecting off the snow made it look like a full moon night, so the cats were running around.
Up at the normal time, morning routine was good. I got some stuff done in the morning.
The Feminist Writing Community met completely virtually over ZOOM (so all the pets could get involved). I got about 2K done on the next chapter of BETTING MAN. I used the notes I made re-reading WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, since much of the chapter takes place backstage during a performance.
It was still snowing in the afternoon, and I just didn’t want to go out and shovel.
It’s an understatement to say I’m angry at the Team USA Men’s Olympic Hockey Team for their disgusting behavior, partying with a fascist dude who should be doing his job solving crimes back home rather than wasting taxpayer dollars (again) to watch sports, laughing along as the pedo-in-chief disses the women’s hockey team, and NOT ONE of those dudes spoke up.
I’ve been a big hockey fan in the past, and I covered the sport for several years. I know the dark underside of a lot of that culture. One of the things that’s always being touted is how important “character” is to a player, and how important that is to the team in general.
NONE of those failed frat boy dudes showed any character.
Am I surprised? Not particularly. When I was covering hockey, shortly after 9/11, it looked like there was room for improvement. But since 2016, I’ve certainly noticed it disintegrate.
As a kid, I was an avid NY Rangers fan. They used to practice at the ice rink in my hometown (way before they got the new facility they use now, further up-county). I would sneak in and watch. They were always very kind to a shy, awkward kid always carrying a book, and it meant something. After the 1980 Olympic win, when Herb Brooks took over as coach, I would sneak in when I could (I was graduating high school that year, and then headed to college), and again, they were always kind. I adored Herb Brooks. I was a NY Rangers fan from afar for years. Theatre and Broadway schedules are often in conflict with hockey games. But then, in 2002-3, I spent about 8 months with a minor league team, and interviewing/researching a few other minor league teams for a project (which never went to print, sadly, although many of my articles did). I did a series of articles over several years where I followed a handful of players from draft for about 5 years, and that was fun and interesting. I even attended the draft, one of which was my first (and only) time in Nashville. I had strong boundaries with these guys, and didn’t take any crap from them, but many of them were all around good people and interesting guys off the ice. At that time, many of them were brought up by single mothers (be they divorced, widowed, or never married), and there seemed to be some progress in lowering the misogyny. Or maybe the guys were more careful around me, but I saw some progress that gave me hope during the years I wrote about the sport.
I stopped around the time I moved to the Cape, both because accessibility to the teams/games was harder from there, and because it was getting harder to find players I wanted to follow over a period of time without getting repetitive. I haven’t followed hockey very closely since. Most of the guys I followed are either retired, in other careers, or in management. I’m in touch with very few of them, and only sporadically.
I had also started watching women’s hockey more, because I found it, in many ways, more interesting (more maneuvers, less checking). But again, on Cape, it was too hard to travel to see games. I watched virtually.
You better believe I had a few things to say to Marty Walsh, who is the head of the Players’ Association, after being Mayor of Boston and then the Labor Secretary. Of course, the NHPLA had disabled their “contact us” but I have other contact information. I had a few choice words.
I hope the players who return to their Canadian teams are booed off the ice, and then are traded as quickly as possible out of Canada. I can understand a beat or two of shock or surprise when they first heard the diss, but then, a genuine leader with character would have stepped up and pointed out how amazing the women’s team was, not just laughed along. There is NO excuse for their behavior. And even if the players didn’t step up, one of the management/coaching team in the room should have. They failed the moment, as so many of the people who should be showing leadership across the spectrum failed the moment.
The women, who won gold, behaved with much more class and dignity. Oh, and by the way? The men’s team might not have won gold since 1980’s Miracle on Ice, but the women’s teams sure have. Consistently. They’ve brought home a medal every time they’ve played in the Olympics.
It also proves that the “security breach” and latest so-called assassination attempt of That Thing was yet again faked, because the person who should have been in charge of the investigation wouldn’t be out of the country if it was real. Or if the individual was out of the country on a job, they’d be back in a heartbeat. And sure as hell shouldn’t be boozing it up in a locker room with what’s going on in Mexico and Iran.
I’m tired of the fakery and the fuckery.
I did a little bit of research on these failed frat dudes on the team, and I am not impressed. The guys I wrote about were much more interesting in interviews and more well-rounded as people. I saw some of these dudes in an Olympic interview, and they behaved like entitled jerks.
Not a surprise, but a disappointment. They had the chance to shine on the world stage and make their country proud, and failed. They demonstrated the worst of us, and showed, yet again, that the rot comes from the top down. It feels like a national betrayal, but we’ve had a lot of those over the last decade, haven’t we?
Whereas the women’s team was the best of us.
I started reading a biography of Katharine White, who was an editor on THE NEW YORKER for years, and that was interesting.
Reworked some leftovers into a more interesting meal, so dinner was good. Did some reading on the next book for review. Put in another Chewy order for cat litter and wet food.
In this morning’s free write, I had an idea about the trilogy of hockey novels that didn’t go anywhere when I first wrote them. There were some paranormal elements in it originally (the rink was haunted), and I may bump those up. And plant a twist in book 1 that would pay off in book 3 with a new road for some of these characters. I think I need to leave it in the early aughts, as it is, but I seem to remember doing a re-read at one point and seeing a need to tighten POVs.
I may take another look at it at some point and see if it can be saved. (GRAVEYARD OF ABANDONED PROJECTS, anyone? That’s one of my Topic Workbooks, in case you’re wondering).
On a happier note, I loved watching people’s videos about how much fun they had out in their snow days, be it around here, in NYC, in Boston, wherever. Lots of work done to clear things, but also lots of fun. The videos were joyful, and that was a nice respite from everything else.
Today, I have to pull it together and dig out the car, even if I do it in increments. Because of the weather, the repair had to be postponed, so I have to get in touch and see when we can schedule it.
I got the notes back from the other ghostwriting project and have to get going on that, and rework the dates for the one I just started.
Plus work on BETTING MAN. And backing up the computer before Mercury goes retrograde on Thursday. Ack. Car repair during Mercury retrograde. But that’s the way it’s shaking out.
Which means I better get a move on, right?
Have a good one.
#blizzard #bookReview #books #cooking #fiction #freelance #ghostwriting #iceHockey #reading #snowstorm #writing
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