Signs, we all see them. We see so many of them that we tend to tune them out. But we should really pay more attention. Consider:

“Crazy weather! Snow & ice is coming?”

Look, I’m not here to pick on the nice people at the hardware store. And they are very nice, I visit there a fair amount. I won’t even make a joke about their forecasting abilities. First, they work in hardware sales, not weather forecasting. Second, I don’t know when they put that message up. It could have been before all of this came down on Friday. Like I said, we tend to tune signs out.

But can we give a nod to the punctuation there? I feel like a lawn sprinkler has just come alive, gained sentience and learned part of our language, but none of our syntax, while I standing nearby reading a label on salt spreaders.

I’ve maybe spent a little too much time over in their paint and wood stain section, and the fumes in the fertilizer area can get to you, too, but I think they might be a bit cavalier with their punctuation.

My exclamation point, exclamation point view all weekend:

Since it started snowing on Friday morning, and we’d done all of our shopping and prep work around the house and made sure we had no plans, we just sat there, looked out at that and read, all weekend. It was terrific.

We also let Allie, The Black Cat, out to explore in it:

During some snow last winter we took her out on the porch, but she wandered around for a few minutes yesterday afternoon. She’s not an outdoor cat, but in her heart she’s an intrepid explorer of things close to the house. And if she can find dirt, she will roll around in it. Snow, well, it felt weird in between her pads, but she didn’t mind traipsing around in it after a minute or two.

You could tell, though, she knows she’s an indoor cat, and this is not cool:

Me? I’m nice and warm:

I have a lot of shirts from school colleges all over. I like the ones that are named after people or tiny places, rather than big cities or states. And this one is a small private school just outside of Philadelphia. My god-sisters-in-law went to school there and they had an extra shirt and it came to be mine.

The school is named after Zacharias Ursinus, a 16th century German theologian. That’s the Latin name he gave himself, which all the cool kids did back then. But his was a pretty direct translation. His given name was Zacharias Baer. Baer, Bears. Get it?

I’m sure all of the freshmen learn that before the snow falls on their first winter at ol’ UC.