No storm yet, just BLIZZARD WARNING splashed on the weather reports and an ominous thickening of the air.

But the pantry is full, and the house is warm, and I have plenty of stuff to do inside: editing, housework, baking, reading. I suspect this may be a "light a fire in the stove and work on my essay in front of it" afternoon . . . before I bundle up and go out to shovel open the driveway so Tom can get his truck into it.

I realized I forgot to tell you about the diamond miner: he is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and worked as a foreman on a mining crew--though in this case mining sounds more like dredging, as what he was describing involved sieving diamonds up from a riverbed. He had a lot to say about the horrors of war and politics and being caught up in all of that, but he also had a lot to say about how hard it is to work in a region filled with monkeys and chimps. Every time you set down your gloves, for instance, monkeys snatch them up and run away with them. He said the men would look up into the trees and see chimps wearing their shorts. These are not problems that I have ever had.