Snow never happens in Texas.

70 degrees on Saturday... 20 degrees on Tuesday.  Oh, how I love my home state.  People from other states really can't understand how proud Texans are of Texas.  Texas is just different, and awesome, and quirky, and independent. 

Enjoy the snow!

Night before after El Taurino's:

 

 What I woke up to (work was delayed)...

Work got cancelled!

Then, the next Tuesday...

It's been a strange winter, indeed.

Magic

C.S. Lewis once said that "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."  I just finished reading the entire Harry Potter series for the uncounted time.  And I already want to read it again.  I still remember it being about 1 in the morning when I started the last book of the series.  My sister was laying on the loveseat with her copy, and I was on the couch with mine.  My friends and I would call each other and carefully ask if the other had gotten to 'this' part yet, trying to pick out significant but non-spoiler points so as to gauge what you could scream about or cry about to each other, or say "Oh just wait!".  The tears started when Hedwig died and just continued in various levels of severity until the last page.  I remember it was about 2 in the morning (the next day) when Fred died and the tears poured from me so much that I couldn't read the pages, and I just kept weeping for so many different reasons until the very end.

Last year, I began to give this big metaphor in class between something that had happened in Harry Potter and something I was trying to teach kids about history... and I got blank stares.  I was aghast.  I asked for a show of hands as to how many had read HP... out of 20, about 4 had, and about 3 more had 'seen the movies.'  Sigh.  It's fading, this initial phenomenon, but it will never fade entirely.  The words are too strong; books are too powerful, and this story, the story of an orphan whose world is turned upside down will find its place next to Peter Pan and Aslan and Cinderella.

I grew up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  These completely fictional characters actually helped to define me as a person, helped me to grow up, helped me to see the world a little more clearly.  I will be eighty years old still reading Harry Potter, and when my grandchildren question me my answer will be "always."  The series is not about wizard school or even heroes really (though, that makes it quite as cool as bow-ties), the story is really about love and overcoming.
It's about the love between friends; it's about how truly important and precious family is; its about being chosen; its about the last thing you think about before you die being the love of your life; its about how sacrifice is the greatest expression of love; its about true nobility that we have so forgotten; its about rebirth from the ashes; its about treating everyone with equal dignity; its about the human fight to keep evil at bay even if it can never quite be eradicated.