More snow?

I hadn't seen anything the last couple of days indicating snow for our area. But, in a conversation yesterday with a co-worker, she said "...more snow tonight..." and I thought to myself - whach you talkin' 'bout Willis!? Then, we woke up to dry pavement this morning. So, I thought my co-worker/novice forecaster had, as expected, been smoking crack when she indicated snow in the forecast to me.

About a half-hour ago, I checked the forecast on-line:

Flakes have begun to fall from a storm churning up the coast that is expected to bring wind gusts of 45 miles per hour and dump up to a half foot of snow by this evening.
Forecasters predict that the storm will intensify during the evening commute, with snow falling at a rate of 1/2 to 3/4 inches an hour late this afternoon.
"It could get pretty messy," said Bill Simpson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton. "You don't need 10 inches to wreak havoc."
The highest accumulations are expected on the tip of Cape Cod and on the South Shore, where up to 6.7 inches of snow is predicted.
Totals in Boston are expected to range from 4 to 5 inches by tomorrow morning. Wind gusts in the city could reach 35 miles per hour, Simpson said.

Ok, so my co-workers do not smoke crack - maybe I've been the one in never-never land the past few days.

Anyway, it's always an interesting commute home during a storm. We shall see what today's commute home brings...

In the news.

When I got laid off about a year ago and was home for a few months, I subscribed to TIME to keep up on current events. Then, this fall, I ended up getting a free subscription to The Wall Street Journal. I usually read most of the TIME issues, not as much of the WSJ, though - mostly due to time constraints.

The WSJ is good for me to flip through daily, given that I do work in financial services. Outside of many of the dry, eye-closing articles, the newspaper does provide educated insight into many issues. The WSJ also has some decent, applicable personal finance articles. I will say though, I sometimes don't even read anything besides the headlines because it has been so depressing to me lately - all the layoffs, companies failing, etc. Some mornings I just cannot read anything else on the economy.

With TIME, at least there are color photos (LOL) and other "stuff" I find interesting - even a little trash about some well-known people.

Anyway...in this week's TIME, on page 14, there were some interesting numbers complied about President Obama's first week. Among them:

• $3,350: Cost of the enhanced-security PDA that may replace Obama's Blackberry.
• 3,300: approximate number of presidentially appointed jobs Obama will have had to fill.
• $61,000: reported cost of George W. Bush's blue and gold Oval Office rug, which Obama has decided to keep, for now.
• 3: Number of Washington restaurants Obama has visited since arriving in town-reportedly three more than Bush had visited since January of last year.

My WSJ will be dropped to my driveway again tomorrow morning. Somehow I think the front page news is not going to uplift my Monday morning mood.

A man among women.

I spend most of every day surrounded by females. At the office, I manage a staff of four - all women. My boss is a woman. At home: my wife Sarah, my girls Allie, Em & Anna. During the week we have mother-in-law Sheila stay with us. That's a 5 to 1 ratio at home and at work!

Sarah will tell you that when she asked me if I wanted to start a blog, I responded with soemthing like "...it's a chick thing, isn't it?" Blogging, in general, may not be a chick thing, but I bet, if I were to get the demographics of the readers of my blog posts, it would be at least a 4 to 1 women to men ratio. I do realize the ratio is somewhat skewed because many readers have arrived on my blog via either TC or Sarah's blog, which are female dominated. However, the fact of the matter is, even when I am on the internet, I am "surrounded" by women!

Being a male among females isn't necessarily a bad thing - some men cannot get a woman to say hello to them! Ha ha ha... So, for the record: I'm not complaining, I'm just taking note of the facts. Remember, I grew up in a family of ten boys and three girls so its not like I haven't gotten into, nor seen my share of stuff that boys and men get into. Just ask my mother!

So, given that I am constantly in the company of women, I try to remain vigilant of how my time is spent. An occasional episode of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, The Bacheleor, or What Not To Wear is OK. Conversations with Sarah about so and so's pregnancy or so and so's children is also OK. Maybe even flipping through a People magazine could also be viewed as harmless. I also do the stereotypical "guy" stuff like flip through the depressing, boring Wall Street Journal, clear the snow in the driveway, take out the trash, lift weights...alright maybe I haven't been working out too much lately but I do exercise!

Anyway...I have been poking around the internet a bit and have found blogs written by fathers of triplets, which may help get the female to male ratio more toward a balanced ratio.

Stay tuned.

What are you talking about Willis?

Sarah emailed me today, suggesting we think about getting a front-to-back, foldable, triple stroller. She found one on the internet marked down to $100, which is a good deal. It would definitely be nice to have this type of stroller for situations when either one of us is home alone and wants to take the girls to the store, etc.

If we do purchase this stroller, we will have a total of five strollers! There is, however, a reason for the number of strollers we have...

We have a single Britax from when Sarah was pregnant with Abigail. When our girls were born, we did research on triple strollers. We decided, however, to pass on purchasing a triple at that time. A good, practical triple stroller cost in excess of $500. In addition, the ones worth purchasing are only good for neighborhood walks as they will not fit in most vehicles. So...we decided to buy a Graco double, which was a good choice. For the first year, having the single and double worked great - they both fit easily in the van with room for groceries, etc.

As the girls approached their first birthday, we started to look at getting a jogging stroller, since we both enjoy running so much. We decided on a single Baby Jogger, thinking one adult could push the double, while the other ran with the single jogger. I found a Baby Jogger single on CL for $125 - not bad. When I met the seller to complete the transcation we had the girls with us, so the seller guy made a few standard triplet comments. One of the comments he made as he was leaving was "...you are going to wish you bought a double jogger..." Ya, right. We now had three strollers.

About a month or two later, we starting to think that it would be nice to be able to take the girls for a walk with just one adult. We did more stroller research and discovered that many parents of multiples use jogging strollers for walking because of the ease with which the jogging strollers roll. Again, to purchase a new triple jogging stroller would set us back close to $700. To Craiglist I returned in search of a used triple jogging stroller - I found a Baby Jogger triple for $150!! And the woman selling it lived in the same town as us, thank you! Buying the triple Baby Jogger was probably one of the best purchases we made. Sheila (Grammy) wore a path in the sidewalk this past summer pushing the girls all around town. We may have caused a few accidents from drivers turning their heads too! We now had four strollers.

So, here we are thinking about buying another stroller. If anyone had told me two years ago that we would be considering purchasing a fifth stroller, I would have probably responded with a "Whach you talkin' 'bout Willis?"!