h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Over the years, I've tried to shake the January blahs by eating at the Rainforest cafe, or by popping "South Pacific" or "Wild Orchids" into the DVD player.

There's a deep freeze here, and snow is coming down relentlessly. I'm enjoying a book about the pleasures of living in Rome and enjoying the local cuisine. I had hoped to be reading Lady Pamela Hicks's memoirs about her experiences with her father [Lord Mountbatten] in India in the late 1940s. That book hasn't come yet. Thinking about India cheers me up when it's Arctic cold outside here.

How do others cope with wintry weather?

Cope? Cope!! There is no cope where there is no Hope.

Alas, I am in the path of that same coming storm and expect
to lose power and the will to live sometime around noon...
I have provided myself with a few stews and chowders to warm
on the woodstove when the lights go out. And I have old fashioned
kerosene lamps... Did you know a Doctor in Nova Scotia invented
the kerosene lamp. Long time ago. He is also credited with the
development of ether as an anesthetic by local tour guides who
wander through the deep snows by kerosene lamplight....

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gesner_abraham_9E.html

Actually I spend much time *worrying* about our antipodean friends
in NZ and OZ who are fighting terrible heat, outrageous fires and
earthquakes... And those poor people in Syria... And Sochi...
And Boston...

I find it's best not to dwell on my own circumstances.



~jwf~

I worry about the misfortunes of others too, jwf. At the top of my list is a determination to keep the number of suffering souls as low as possible by keeping my own head above water .

First half an hour of "The Empire Strikes Back".

And John Carpenter's "The Thing".

Ivanhoe (book)
Stardust (film)

Sho

Your tastes are older than I thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_%281974_film%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdTg9n0_Rsc

[Waits to see if jwf's roof caves in under the weight of three inches of snow]

The drift outside my door is closer to three feet.
But overall it's about 18 - 24 inches all round.

And it's minus 12 Celsius. That's almost 4*F.



~jwf~

oh sorry, BB, much as I love the young David Essex, I meant the more recent Stardust (from the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name) with Mark Strong and Robert Di Nero

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpeM3lvu2m0

and, of course, my other DVD would be The Princess Bride. And maybe Marvel's Avengers.

'Towering Inferno' is a favourite chez moi. When the icicles start forming we like to sit around the TV and watch this, toasting marshmallows on Richard Chamberlain.

As for a cold weather book? Has to be the Encyclopedia Brittanica, it will take you through the coldest night and those luxury hard covers certainly build up some residual heat.