If you're reading this, I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday. Here in Oklahoma we enjoyed a white, whiter, darn-will-this-stuff-ever-stop-coming-down white Christmas. We stoked the fire (read turned up the gas jet to the extremely real looking fake logs)and settled in for a 4-day marathon of cooking, eating and celebrating. Family from Texas arrived on Wednesday, and sometime during that night, while we all lay snug in our wee little beds, the wind began to blow with a vengeance from all four corners of the earth, rattling windows and doors with blast after icy blast before depositing a thick layer of sleet. Eventually the sleet was covered over by even thicker layers of wind-driven snow in a storm of such epic proportions it was immediately given a name, its own camera crew, 24-hour local coverage, as well as guest appearances on all the national news networks. Blizzard '09 snarled traffic, caused wrecks, left abandoned cars in its wake, and put a serious kink in a lot of people's last minute shopping plans. We watched from inside as it whirled and eddied itself into fanciful drifts so high we nearly lost Buster when he finally ventured outside to take care of business. By Saturday, when things thawed enough for reasonably sane people to get out on the highway, we tottered our way to snow-covered cars and motored northward to the OKC, where we enjoyed watching Bonnie and her fellow ThunderGirls perform during the times when the team wasn't playing and t-shirts weren't being parachuted from the ceiling or shot from cannons at us. Bonnie looked great on the big screen. From where we sat, and without aid of binoculars, she looked like a really cute speck with a great tan. Our seats were in the area of the arena affectionately referred to as Loud City. Loud City, as it turns out, sits at an altitude only slightly less than that of Base Camp at Mt. Everest. However, the seats did come with foam fan fingers, so the climb was totally worth it. The Thunder won, and after we made our descent and recovered from just a skosh of altitude sickness, we staggered back to our cars and slid home to Norman where we promptly ate some more before settling under our downy duvets one last time. By Sunday all the company had cleared out, but not so the snow. In fact, Blizzard '09 is still trying to hang around, reluctant to give up its five minutes of fame. But like Balloon Boy, nobody's really interested in it anymore. Today the guys on TV are all about how it's going to be 2 one night this week. Two stinking degrees. And well below that with a wind and, let's face it, when does Oklahoma not have a wind? Huddle up folks, Killer Cold Front '10 is on its way.
