What did You do on this First Day of Snow?

First thing I did today, rightly or wrongly, was cancel our Writer's Group. I'd gotten an email from our Township saying Stay off the Roads.

The roads are fine. But Carly wrote back saying, Good, I'll just snuggle up under my blanket and have another cup of coffee.

I plan to watch movies with Scott. Last nite we watched The Perfect Storm, a true story starring Geo Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. The title, according to Wiki, is: A powerful hurricane or other major weather disturbance, especially as produced by a combination of meteorological conditions.

Classified as a disaster movie, it was absolutely thrilling. I was a nervous wreck as the "Andrea Gail" fishing boat - piloted by the unlucky, impulsive Clooney - began breaking up under the ravages of the hurricane and two other fearsome squalls - but Scott was totally nonchalant.

This morning, while watching last nite's Charlie Rose Show on my laptop, Dan called. Gee, I hadn't realized my phone was an AT&T.

He arranged for a conference call for les trois - the three Demings!

Sarah is working on our Kidney Memoir and wanted Dan's impressions of when she boxed in the Golden Gloves at Madison Square Garden and got a bloody nose. She lost but felt victorious cuz her opponent was so much better than my little girl was.

I remember when the announcer introduced Sarah, mentioning she'd been a comp lit major at Brown, [with a minor in religion].

Since Dan, Sarah and I would be on the phone for a while, I hopped on my exercise bike and pedaled for 25 minutes.

Talking to my kids was even better than riding to The Rifleman or two great Rockford Files I saw recently. One time Rockford got locked up in an insane asylum, a positively brilliant episode.

Here's how I looked when I got off the horse:

Then I brewed myself two cups of 12 O'Clock Coffee, A and P's brand, which had been sitting in my fridge a good three years or so. It was delicious!!!

Yesterday, my sisters Ellen and Donna met at the Starbucks on County Line Road where Donna works. I had their delicious strong decaf and Donna gave us a sample taste of their new Blonde Roast, which they came up with to compete with Dunkin Donuts.

After one sip, I turned to Donna and said, "Are you f'ing kidding me? This doesn't even taste like coffee."

The Charlie Rose Show featured another installment of his fantastic Brain Series, this time on the strange occurrence of loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor ... this from Wiki.

The great Nobelist Eric Kandel was moderator. He's 82 and won the 2000 prize for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons.

When I was 19 and at Goddard College, two friends and I took a mescaline trip. I can still see what I then believed was the way memory storage worked: very fast flipping through tiny cards like in a Rolodex. Actually, that is how the memory works, according to the show. We compare new memories with old ones.

Artist Chuck Close has a form of anosias. He has difficulty remembering faces, including a woman he lived with for two years. He said he's "driven" to paint people's faces.

It would be overwhelming, he said, unless he broke up the painting - which may take as long as a year to complete - into small sections, hence his using tiny dots to complete the painting.

Here's one he did of my cousin Mark:

Oops! That my pharmacist Dr. Bob. They still owe me 60 tabs of tacrolimus, my chief antirejection med, but I've got plenty.

Several years ago, my family and I went to an opening at the DC Moore Gallery to view Mark's most recent work. Afterward, my sisters Donna and Ellen, Mark's mom Aunt Selma, then 89, and I visited Chuck Close's studio. I blogged about it w/great photos but apparently it was on my old blog. Chuck showed us his amazing wheelchair which he had specially made.

Another shot of Chuck Close taken at close range from my Acer laptop, which has at least two teaspoons of food between the keys.

Some people have mezuzas by their door, which I do at my front door, but I have photos of the kids as talismans by the family room door.

Snow view.

Ken the mailman came on time. I threw all my "mail" away.

When's the last time YOU got any good mail?