south?

It’s time to take a break. Wisconsin has forged some kind of weather alliance with northern Canada this year and I'm getting impatient with it all. Time to head south. Where a daughter lives. D.C. is south. D.C. hardly ever gets snow. D.C. is balmy now. Springlike almost.

I’m coming!

Say what? I'm bringing with me snow and ice to the east coast? I'm so sorry! But surely this would not include D. C… Could it??

The plane is full of people diverted from cancelled flights into New York and Boston. Lucky us. We’re heading south of that mess.

So it’s unfortunate to hear the pilot come on and say “folks..” (captains like that expression) “… we’re being diverted.” Why? -- I wonder. “Our landing gear isn’t working properly (something about no skid that or the other) and so we need an extra long runway. That means going back to Detroit or landing in Dallas. We’re choosing the latter.”

At least that’s what everyone heard. Dead silence. Then murmurs. (Wow, that’s really south!) Then another announcement. “Folks, there seems to be some confusion. We mean Dulles, not Dallas.”

The minute cell phones are permitted, the whole plane calls everyone they know to tell the story of Dallas, no, Dulles, and ha ha! isn’t it funny?

People like a happy ending.

But it’s icy and foggy here. I take the city bus from Dulles to DC downtown and I can barely recognize anything outside. The city is hiding behind a layer of cold, gray air.





I am a bad weather magnet!

Still, I'm not discouraged. This is daughter-land! And weather patterns change. And walking from the metro stop to her place I see this:





...and this:





Perhaps not balmy. But warm enough for someone to be sitting outside. How about that! How spring-y!