i'm a little agitated this afternoon. my son is coming in on a flight from dallas to peoria, landing at ten thirty tonight. meanwhile all hell has broken loose on the weather front - bomb cyclone, heavy winds, snow blowing around, that kind of thing. things are much worse in the north where it's like eighty below; here, it's about five below with a much worse wind-chill. still that's pretty serious. not the kind of weather you want to get stranded in.

the roads are messy but not too icy. the wind is blowing so badly that visibility is limited, but i find that as long as my brakes work i can drive with confidence; the roads are, after all, pretty straight. out driving around town there were a few steep hills where the road goes either over or under railroad tracks; those steep hills were manageable, not too much ice. not any, really, except in the parking lots. but it's soooooo cold that you don't even want to think about getting out of the car. drive-through? i couldn't consider it, i didn't want to open the window. i actually went into two mcdonald's looking for a smoothing (they weren't making them) because it was easier to me to walk a short ways, than to open a window and try to talk to someone through it.

my son, on his end, is nervous. he has to go to el paso first, then dallas; that flight should be no problem. it's the dallas-to-peoria leg that has us worried. how are they going to land in seven below temps? well, they do, i guess, and they've found no reason to cancel yet. nothing for it but to go through with it.

frantic christmas shopping going on here all through the cold and even in spite of the cold. i went out several times to do battle; found all kinds of things. parking lots were wind=swept, blizzardy, frozen, but life was going on as usual. this has to be one of the most extreme "weather events" of the last several years and that's what the news is saying. i think it's really extreme, if you happen to live in the dakotas or minneapolis. but even here, it's pretty bad.

they have snow and extreme cold down in the mountains of new mexico, of course; it's my friends in texas that are getting out of the worst of it, as usual. in texas, it just doesn't get this cold, ever. they have winter, in some places, in some parts of texas, and they have wind - in some cases a lot of it. but they don't really have "bomb cyclone" experiences. we moved right back up into the thick of it, i'm afraid. and it's not even january yet.

a little nervous about my trip to p-i-a. but i'll survive; i always do. and i will give a full report.