loveless, icy SCOTUS

Thank you to shiitake for the reminder on the best toffee in the world. I can't remember if I mentioned that before, but as long as I was about to thank her for reminding me about My Bloody Valentine's Loveless which I hadn't listened to in forever, I figured I might as well hit the toffee again.

So, we got the ice storm last night. I asked Tino to take a picture of the view out of our bedroom, and he did take the picture but he has not given it to me yet. For those of you not familiar with ice storms (we get a couple every year in Virginia), they coat everything and they are actually prettier than snow, once the shit stops falling out of the sky.

Unfortunately, the ice storm caused me to not sleep well. I didn't get to bed until 2:30 both because I wasn't sleepy and because I wanted to finish To Say Nothing of the Dog. I was asleep for not that long (it was still dark out, so it couldn't have been more than a couple hours) when a tree fell on a car and set off it's alarm[1]. I heard the tree actually fall -- that's what woke me up. The alarm was impossible to ignore, once it started going off.

Anyway, it looks real purty out in reston where we have oodles of the trees. The holly trees (not bushes -- trees, different species) have a bumper crop of the red berries this year so they look incredibly festive coated with ice...even if they are drooping with the weight.

To see more of what this looks like, check this out. Shenandoah National Park sufferred a lot of damage in an ice storm in 1998.

May I take a moment to express my total disgust with the U.S. Supreme Court? I'm one of those who think they some of them misapplied 'equal protection' in order to make sure they can retire in the next four years. Yes, I'm that distrustful.

There are virtually no citations of case law in that opinion, and I just *love* how states can make their own laws until it's not in the best interest if the conservative members of the court. Usually, conservatives are all *about* state's powers. We had a civil war over this once, as you may recall.

We are not amused.

[1]If this whole ice storm thing is an unknown to you, this is how it works: freezing rain falls from the sky and hits things that are already at a cold temperature thus forming a thick coat of ice (this storm was about 1/4"-3/8", which isn't too bad). This means that the upper branches of a tree are completely covered with a layer of water which stresses unhealthy branches causing them to break off. Sometimes, the ice breaks off the whole top of the tree. This is how people lose power from ice storms -- trees fall on non-buried power lines and break them. Reston has all buried power. The country house has exposed power lines, and there is a decent chance that we don't have any power out there right now. Allegheny Power *did* cut a wide swath for the unburied portion though, so it better have done some good.

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