real snow

We went to a Japanese food place.  I wanted pumpkin soup, tempura vegetables, something different.

I was looking out the window and realized the rain wasn't rain anymore.  It was white and floaty.  I could see it in the streetlamp light.

"Holy crap!  It's snowing!" I told Ming.  He went out to look.

The flakes got bigger as the time passed.  I would see them move, thick and wild, being pushed around quickly in the wind.  Huge billows of them.  Blizzardy.

"It's like a blizzard!" I said.  Couldn't believe the other eaters weren't amazed as I was.  They were too cool!  I was mystified. 

In Las Vegas I only saw the briefest of snow, a few years ago.  Just a minute of it, small flakes of snow that were barely snow.  Technical snow.

Well, the pumpkin soup was very delicious.  It tasted like pumpkin.  The veg, I realized I'm not supposed to have fried stuff right now, very much, so I had half, most enjoying the tempura sweet potato.  The avocado roll, I realized nori sheets are kind of like raw veg, roughage, so I only had a little.  The inari was heavenly.  Ordered a second order.

Driving home, across town, I remembered a poem I wrote when I lived in Bishop, living in the snow for the first time.  There were the lines "the snowfall hypnotizes me / like a screensaver." 

Well, if any kids are reading, maybe you don't know what a screensaver is.  I guess they hypnotized me.

I told Ming the story of a student I had my first ever class, first time I ever taught, 1998, at UC Irvine.  I was 22 and they were 18.  I didn't have the boundaries figured out yet.

As we went north, homeward, the snow turned into rain.  I was txting with my friend who is a teacher still, my age.

Maybe the heater in the bedroom has done its job.  I can't stay awake anymore.  Gnight.