bad weather, bad health, and badness

California makes a person soft. The weather is, for here, terrible: it's been raining all day, with gusty winds up to 40+ miles an hour. Accidents are piling up on the freeway; streets are flooding; chaos and lawlessness are descending upon us. (It's true! We've had to defend ourselves from three bands of roving, devolved troglodytes just this afternoon!) And there's more rain on the way.

In Pittsburgh, you'd call this kind of weather "Wednesday," and it wouldn't strike you as abnormal, except in January or February, when you'd say it was unseasonably warm. And in Fairbanks today the high temperature is -9.

I feel cold and wet. I've lived here almost 9½ years.

We had to risk drowning to take the cat to the vet today, because his GI tract is once again three miles of bad road. Poor old thing. They're running blood tests and have us feeding him antibiotics (which helped the last time), so we'll see. Of course, I'm worried sick, so I didn't sleep last night, which helps tremendously.

By the way, I wasn't kidding about risking drowning. The onramp to get onto the Crankster Freeway was almost unnavigable. The driveway through the complex soon will be. We were planning to go out to a hobby shop in search of model train gear tomorrow, but I've called that off.

In other news, it sure warmed the cockles of my heart to read of Hillary Clinton's response to her coming in third to Barack Obama in yesterday's Iowa Caucus. "Don't have false hopes, don't get your hopes up too high" is such optimistic, forward-thinking speech. It really shows what she stands for.

We also saw Sweeney Todd yesterday, as ruined utterly by Tim Burton. It's a terrible story, of course, but it's a musical, you know, with music, and it's supposed to be entertaining, you know, like entertainment. Burton drained it of almost all humor, made the entire production as grim as possible (with the exception of Helena Bonham Carter's cleavage), and soaked it in blood. Could someone please explain to Tim Burton the difference between a movie musical and a snuff film? Please? Thank you.

Tim Burton is now not allowed in the house.

I don't think Alan Rickman should be, either, but that's still in negotiation.