Some days of genuine winter around here, I tell you. A recent New England classic: inches of gorgeous powdery wonderfulness at midnight, by dawn a dense wet slushy concretion of doom. Even getting a narrow path shoveled before one of my few remaining morning baths for some time was like digging a trench through cold taffy while getting battered by howling horizontal waves of icy pellets–some serious morning cheer. and still the rain falls, every foot now falling into either 6 inches of snow or slush or pools of gathered water–no dry land or branch within sight.