Thursday, 05 December 2002 | Sideways

At work, there's a giant window about ten feet behind me. Normally I don't look out of it very often, but today the snow kept getting my attention. It fell steadily all day, and in the draft between my building and the next, the snow didn't always fall down, but also left and right and even up. People kept stopping by my desk, mentioning the bizarro world snow and standing there, just watching it. People in the building next door took turns walking out onto their fire escape (which is almost even with my window) to smoke cigarettes or get silently pelted or collect and throw a snowball at the nothing ten floors below. Ian told me when he was walking through Union Square today, he saw some adults in the midst of a spontaneous snowball fight.

The snowfall was somewhat eclipsed by the simultaneous ice storm in North Carolina; I didn't have a power outage or driving problems, I just had to pay attention to each step on matted snow. I fell once, on the way to work, and was immediately (and unnecessarily) helped up by a kind New Yorker who warned me that my fall was likely the first of many today. Good he was wrong.

***

I've put up a few pictures from the cat show on Saturday.