The Laden Bough, 35th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): “When it is cold, let the cold kill you,” Tozan advised. Tozan (807–869), also known as Dongshan Liangjie, not only felt that the cold needn't be avoided, but advised something useful, something practical, to do with the cold - use it and practice with it to kill the ego-self that clung to its preferences.   

"When cold and hot come," Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253 AD) advised, "let go." He cryptically added, "Eyebrows totally fallen out, your empty name is killed."  Eyebrows falling out usually implies lying, the ever-helpful Shohaku Okumura explains, sort of like modern western culture associates lying with one's nose growing longer. But Dogen may have been saying that the eyebrows fell out because of our delusions about the cold, but once the eyebrows are gone, we have nothing left to lose and have to face the truth of our real self. 

The second of the Buddha's four noble truths states that our suffering is caused by our attachments and desires. It stands then that if we cling to a desire to change things that are outside of our control, we will suffer. Cold weather is an external event outside of our direct control, but our perception of the cold is not. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (50 – 135 AD) advises us to accept the weather as it is rather than wish it were different. The Buddha would not have disagreed. 

Tozan was the cold as an opportunity to let go of the ego-self. Epictetus saw it as an opportunity to training for future challenges. "Neither a bull nor a noble-spirited man comes to be what he is all at once," he wrote in The Discourses (Book 1, Chapter 2.32). "He must undergo a hard winter training and prepare himself and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate for him." 

Epictetus' teacher Musonius Rufus (25 – 100 AD) said, "It is not good to be entirely without experience of cold and heat, but one ought in some degree to feel the cold in winter and likewise the heat in summer and to seek shade as little as possible."

The Buddha, the Stoic philosophers, and the Zen masters all seem to agree that patience and acceptance are keys to enduring the cold, and that denial of the changing seasons is not only unhelpful but makes things worse. Dogen once cited a Chinese proverb:  

In the jade palace, the kingfisher builds his nest

But the gold palace offers no shelter for the mandarin duck.

The kingfisher represents focus, patience, and at the right moment, swift and decisive action. It suggests a calm, mindful, and accepting state. Mandarin ducks, seen floating on the water in gardens and moats, following the currents and tides wherever they may lead, are associated with the transient nature of life. The jade and gold palaces, obviously, are happiness, success, nirvana. Contentment, the proverb is saying, comes to the patient and focused, and those caught up in the samsara of day-to-day existence will not find peace. 

To face the cold, as well as the other challenges of life, we should adopt a calm and accepting mind, embrace them as opportunities to strengthen our resolve and practice, and avoid trying to change or wish away those things which are beyond our control. I'll try to keep that in mind when the next cold front comes through here next week.

We'll let Dogen have the last word:

In spring hundreds of flowers, in autumn the clear moon,
In summer a cool breeze, and in winter the white snow,
If your mind is free of vanity, then every season is fine.

 

Plains of Paradise, 34th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The cold is gone and today I walked an 8.4-mile Van Buren even though I missed my previous walk due to last weekend's single-digit wind-chill temperatures. Today's high temperature was about 55°, which felt quite comfortable after the previous days of teens and twenties. In the here and now of the present moment, there is no cold, and this goony bird forgot about building nests and frolicked in the warmth. 

There was a time of cold and a time of suffering and then there was a time of no cold and no suffering. There will be a time of heat and a time of suffering, and there will be a time of no heat and no suffering. Tozan suggests we meet the cold and shivering  as well as the heat and sweating with acceptance of those transient moments and leave the suffering behind. Epictetus just entered the conversation and agrees with Tozan.

Meanwhile, it's still sinking in that after the raid on Fulton County and seizure of the 2020 election ballots, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard have my name, my date of birth, my social security number, and know for whom and how I voted. What they're going to do with that information is up to them and the Stable Genius, but I suspect I'll experience their retribution one way or the other, either directly or indirectly.   

Day of the Voyage, 33rd of Childwinter, 526, M.E. (Castor): Every time it gets bitter cold, I reflexively revisit Tozan's "Go to a place that's neither hot nor cold." I did it last November, when the first cold blast of Hagwinter hit the American South. I did it two winters ago. I did it way back in 2010. The problem with maintaining a blog for 20+ years is that the ruts my mind is stuck in become so painfully obvious. Yet when the temperatures aren't uncomfortably cold or hot, I don't think very much about Tozan or his advice. 

Zen Mater Eihei Dogen (1200-1253 AD) wrote a poem in apparent response to Tozan's advice:

How can the three realms and ten directions be all one color?

Who would discuss the difference between human and heavenly beings?

Do not convey talk of birds suffering in the cold.

The lake with no heat of anxiety is on the snowy mountain.

Contemporary Zen Master Shohaku Okumura (1948-present) helpfully explains that "birds suffering in the cold” is a reference to an allegorical pair of birds in the Himalayas. In the night, when it is extremely cold, the female bird repeatedly complains, “Cold is killing me. Cold is killing me.” Her mate replies, “Let’s make a nest tomorrow. Let’s make a next tomorrow.” However, when the sun rises and it becomes warm, they forget the plan of making a nest, and just enjoy the daytime. When night comes again, they complain in the same way. They repeat this every day and every night though their entire lifetime.

Whenever the temperature drops below the mid-20s here in Atlanta and my furnace can't keep my house as warm as I'd like, I turn to Tozan. "Help me make it through the night," I beg. "Give me some words of wisdom to help me endure this bitter cold." Spring comes as it always does and I need the Wikipedia page to even remember who Tozan was.

The "three realms and the ten directions" in Dogen's poem is a poetic reference to the entire universe throughout space and time. It's not all one color and we can't expect it to always have the same comfort-zone temperature in all places at all times. It is a basic Buddhist understanding that there is no difference between human and heavenly beings. Depending upon how we look at it, life can be either heaven or hell. When they suffer with cold, those birds complain and make up their minds to build a nest where they can sleep comfortably, but when the sun rises and it becomes warm, they forget about the cold night and their plan to make a nest is never carried out. Dogen ends the poem by pointing out that despite the bitter cold, in the same snowy mountains where the birds live there also supposedly exists a mythological lake that was thought to be the paradise source of all rivers in the world. Warmth in the cold, cold in the warmth.

It's 41° outside today. My furnace is easily able to keep me comfortably warm and I've stopped dripping my faucets. The storm has passed for now. Time for this goony bird to forget about Tozan until the polar vortex fails again and another mass of cold Arctic air spills over the North American continent.

 

Day of Domain, 32nd of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Philosophy can't keep you warm in winter. You can't skin it and wear it, you can't burn it, you can't sit beside it and feel the warmth emanate off of it. It's truly worthless in the cold. 

But still, it does put things in perspective. The weather's never hot nor cold; hot or cold is our experience of different temperature ranges. Given time, we can acclimate to different temperatures - last night's official (NWS) low of 19° F might seem downright balmy to an Inuit or an Antarctic explorer. I've seen people sweat and complain when the temperature gets up into the 80s, although here in Georgia anything below 90 is considered "mild."

I like temperatures in the 90s. I'm comfortable in the 90s. I wasn't comfortable last night. 

It's perfectly acceptable but not quite correct to say, "it's cold outside." People understand what you're saying, which is the whole point of communication, but what is that "it?" "It's" not cold - you're cold. We can say "a cold air mass" has moved into the region, but it that air mass is only cold relative to the temperature of other air masses and our 98.6° bodies. A 19° air mass is incredibly warm relative to the unimaginably cold zero-degree Kelvin temperature of interstellar space. In fact, there's virtually no difference between a 19° F air mass and a 91° F air mass compared to the 0° K cold of outer space. 

Those thoughts didn't make me feel any warmer last night.

My furnace has been running virtually non-stop for some 36 hours now, and the thermostat still hasn't caught up to the setting. The temperature in the house never dropped below 70 last night, at least while I was awake, but there was a chill in the air that felt far below 70°. To prevent the pipes from freezing, I let every faucet in the house drip overnight, and they're still dripping now. I started the car today and the battery didn't want to turn over, although with some coaxing I finally got it to start, and I let the car idle for a half hour to warm the engine and charge the battery.

No, there's no "hot" or "cold" other than our own response and disposition toward the temperature, but there's also no escape from the sensations of "hot" and "cold." "Hot" and "cold" is just the universe being the universe and our experience of "hot" and "cold" is just us being ourselves. 

That thought still didn't make me feel any warmer last night, and it wasn't supposed to.  But it did help me understand that what I was shivering through was just my reaction to things as they are, and instead of fruitlessly wishing things were different perhaps I should just observe them and myself, put an extra blanket on the bed, make sure my cat Eliot was comfortable, and wait for the sensation to pass. 

Zen and Stoicism agree that suffering exists and also that it's mainly self-imposed. Zen's solution is a sort of annihilation of the ego-self through the practice of meditation; Stoicism's solution is through application of logic. My approach is contemplative stoicism, a bit of both.

Update: At 4:04 pm, the outdoor temperature reached 35°, my indoor thermostat finally caught up to its setting, and the furnace finally got like a five-minute break.

 

The Lost Island, 31st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): T.S. Eliot is full of shit. Give me April any day - it's January that's the cruelest month. The throat of winter is upon us, and the barren barley fields are swaying like mad in the gusty, 35-mph winds. 

It snowed in Atlanta this morning (Atlanta!) although it didn't stick and only came down for less than an hour. But still, it's cold outside: 25° F with a wind-chilled feels-like temperature of 8°. It's supposed to drop down to 17° overnight, and I can only guess what the wind will make that feel like.

It's colder than the furnace in this drafty old house can keep up with. I turned the thermostat up to 75, but after running non-stop all day, it's only up to 73° in here, and away from the thermostat and the airducts it feels a lot cooler.  No telling how far down the inside temps will drop tonight. I'm dripping water from all my faucets to reduce the chances of pipes freezing. 

Worse, it's not forecast to warm up anytime soon. It will remain frigid all next week, and we won't see seasonal temperatures until at least next weekend. And I saw a not-at-all encouraging long-term prediction that it will stay colder than normal until well into the spring. 

I don't like the cold. Sure, hot, humid weather can be uncomfortable, but the cold is downright painful. And while heat stroke can be a risk if you don't know how to manage yourself in the Georgia sun, hypothermia and the cold carry a greater risk of death. 

I'll get through it. I'll find my Zen space that's neither hot nor cold, and I'll take solace in the fact that today is the last day of January and we're almost halfway through Childwinter.   

Tozan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you.” However, that doesn't mean you should just go ahead, accept your fate and die. The "you" that the cold should kill is the ego-self with its preferences and biases and desires. Tozan is reminding us that what we call "cold" is just the world as it is - the climate doesn't experience "cold," it's us who suffer the cold. Today feels cold, this summer it will feel hot, one day it will rain, and another it won't. Flowers, while cherished, fade, and weeds, although despised, thrive. This is the way the universe works, whether we like it or not.

There's no escaping the cold or the heat, but we can let go of our preferences and accept that this is the way things are. Ditto sickness, old age, and death. Tomorrow when you're old and your mouth is paved with gold you begin to feel the cold inside. 

But we don't need to give up. Go ahead and build a fire or crank up the thermostat when you're cold, take your medicine and get some exercise when you're old and sick. But we don't need to increase our own suffering by adding on our personal preferences as to the way we want things to be.

This is the meeting of two arrows in midair ("hitting a bullet with a bullet"), where Zen and Stoicism come together. In the cold. In January. Right here, right now.

 

Structures of Earth, 30th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): A warming climate increases the surface temperature of lakes, oceans, and other water bodies. As the waters warm, the solubility of oxygen decreases, organisms die, and the decay of organic matter leads to further oxygen depletion. The higher temperatures also increase evaporation from water bodies, resulting in increased precipitation. This causes higher rates of weathering of rocks and higher concentrations of phosphorous and other nutrients in rivers. The nutrients further lower oxygen levels in deep waters due to increased respiration by organisms.

Anthropogenic climate change is currently warming the planet and depleting the oxygen in rivers, lakes, and oceans, but back in geologic time, volcanism was the culprit in raising global temperatures and oxygen-deprived oceans. The CO₂ released during volcanic outgassing caused global warming at various times in the geologic past, the cascading effects of which resulted in anoxic oceans. 

The late Cambrian Steptoean positive carbon isotope excursion (SPICE) coincided with trilobite extinctions and global ocean anoxia. Geologists recently analyzed sedimentary rocks at four sites across the central Missouri basin representing a range of Cambrian water depths. Their data indicated that during the SPICE, increased phosphate was available in the surface ocean, resulting in persistent oxygen-poor conditions in shallow seas. They inferred that the elevated phosphorus levels increased biological activity in the surface ocean, sustaining oceanic anoxia until the feedback was broken by rising atmospheric oxygen levels. The study identifies phosphorus as a key driver of late Cambrian oxygen depletion in the ocean and a cause of the trilobite extinction.

Some people think that CO₂-related global climate change is a relatively new concept, something dreamed up by Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. But geologists have been studying the effects of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases on the climate for decades - I learned back in the 1970s that the Eocene was the warmest Epoch in the Cenozoic, and we know this by both the fossil evidence and the high levels of atmospheric CO₂ trapped in the sediments. The global average atmospheric CO₂ concentration is currently about 422 ppm, continuing the rapid, long-term upward trend from pre-industrial levels of about 280 ppm. However, CO₂ levels during the Eocene CO₂ concentrations were approximately 1,400 ppm and the average temperature was about 86° F with little temperature gradient from pole to pole. Today, the global average is about 57° F with significant latitudinal variation. 

So it came as no surprise to me to hear concern decades later that man might be monkey-wrenching our planet with our profligate CO₂ emissions.

 

Acrid Takeover, 29th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Acrid - having an irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell. Takeover - to assume control or possession, to become dominant. Example - The FBI's seizure of election ballots from 2020 in Atlanta yesterday left a bitter and unpleasant taste in the mouths of Georgia citizens appalled by the acrid takeover.  

As you've no doubt heard, the FBI executed a search warrant yesterday at an election center in Fulton County, seizing ballots in a significant escalation of the administration’s continued efforts to overturn the Stable Genius' 2020 defeat in Georgia.

This affects me personally - I care because my mail-in ballots from that covid-sodden year-of-the-plague 2020 are probably among the ballots seized. The FBI has my five-year-old votes and my voter's registation information. Infuriatingly, the only reason the ballots still exist and weren't destroyed after two years as per state law is because of private lawsuits (Favorito v. Wan, and Jeffords v. Fulton County) by MAGA zealots that have been lingering on for years, and a judicial order that the ballots be preserved as evidence in the suits.

Inexplicably, Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, the wildly unqualified Director of National Intelligence, was present at the Fulton County raid. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia pointed out there are only two reasons why Tulsi would be at the raid. “Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus," he tweeted, "in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.” He further pointed out that “either is a serious breach of trust that further underscores why she is totally unqualified to hold a position that demands sound judgment, apolitical independence, and a singular focus on keeping Americans safe.”

The Stable Genius has been obsessed with his loss in Georgia in 2020 (good). However, the ballots have been tabulated and retabulated, counted and recounted, electronically and manually, and subject to multiple lawsuits. Georgia and Fulton County officials and election experts have repeatedly confirmed the vote and have refuted assertions of election fraud and no evidence of fraud was ever presented under oath in court. 

Seizing ballot boxes and voting machines is a classic tactic straight out of the totalitarian playbook. It's the behavior of the Maduros, the Mussolinis, and the Putins of the world - in other words, right up the Stable Genius' alley.  

Friendly reminder that the Constitution clearly and explicitly puts voting laws and procedures squarely in the hands of the States, not the federal government. I don't trust Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, the FBI, or anyone in the Stable Genius' administration with my vote and my voter registration information. I'm appalled that they this information - not only who I cast my ballot for, but my address, date of birth, and all the other sensitive information in the registry. I don't trust that they won't do exactly what they're insinuating Fulton County's done - namely, destroy ballots, generate false ballots, and alter existing ballots - and also use my personal information for retribution purposes. 

Hands off my ballots, Tulsi! Hands off, Kash! Hands off, FBI! Hands off, Stable Genius! And to paraphrase Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, "Get the fuck out of Fulton County!"

 

Day of Drifts, 28th of Childwinter, 536 M.E. (Deneb): I hate 2026. I hate its cold, frigid weather. I hate this year's extrajudicial executions by federal agents in Minneapolis.  I hate our government's Venezuelan adventures earlier this month. I hate my grocery bills and the rising cost of everything. This year sucks.

Okay, got that out of my system. Nothing is all bad or all good - there must be something positive in this woe begotten year, so let me think. . . I saw a couple good movies on Netflix, but they were made and released in 2025 (or earlier) so they're not really something good from this year. Some of my favorite sports teams won some of their games and the New England Patriots are going to the Superbowl, but I recognize that those are "good" events only relative to myself and that for every win I celebrate someone else is lamenting a loss. I guess the best part of 2026 so far has been Alex Honnold topping the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan - no one other than a complete psychopath was cheering for the skyscraper. 

I could look at it existentially and say, "Well, at least I'm still alive," but in a year like this, I'm reminded of the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."  

The best part of being dead is you no longer have to say, "I wish I were dead." The best part of being alive is you can still say, "I wish I were dead."

 

Day of Barren Swarm, 27th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): "If you white men had never come here, this country would still be like it was. It would be all pure here. You call it wild, but it wasn’t really wild, it was free. Animals aren’t wild, they’re just free. And that’s the way we were. You called us wild, you called us savages. But we were just free! If we were savages, Columbus would never have gotten off the island alive." - Leon Shenandoah, former Tadodaho of the Grand Council of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy.

The fascist takeover of the U.S. government, the militias in our cities kidnapping people and murdering citizens, the kleptocracy, the corruption, and the abrogation of civil rights is the karmic consequence of two and a half centuries of the existence of the United States of America. A country founded on the twin practices of genocide and slavery can't expect things to go well in the long run. 

But it's not completely our fault. To those white supremacists who laud European heritage and values, and who boast that all great ideas and progress stemmed from Europeans, I say that it was the European values that insisted on cleansing the continent of its indigenous people, and instituting slavery to spur productivity and profits. The sins for which we're paying the karmic price now were the sins of the European monarchies and not the American colonialists, although the colonists eventually took to them with a disturbing passion.

Acolytes of the Stable Genius say, with their tongue only slightly in their cheek, that a little bit of dictatorship may not be a bad thing, and maybe we do need a king to get things done around here. But Western civilization has tried it with royal kings and queens before, and it wound up with endless wars between competing monarchs, not only militarily but economically as well.

England and France and Spain and Portugal and Rome and others had been competing for domination for centuries before the discovery of the New World, each kingdom convinced of their absolute moral and spiritual superiority, each determined to see their rivals perish and fail. The New World simply presented a new sphere of competition, as well as a source for raw materials to further the kingdoms' ambitions. England in particular saw its North American colonies as nothing but vassal states to grow crops, mine ores, fell wood for the ambitions of the King, and to consume the goods and pay tribute to its sovereign overlord. Spain saw the continent as an open land ripe for plundering and looting. The other kingdoms were no better.

The fact that indigenous people were already living on the new continent was merely an inconvenience to the competing monarchies, an obstacle to their imperial goals. Killing, looting, raping, and kidnapping the natives was considered the divine right of the superior nation, so if the presence of the indigenous got in the way of their goals, they were to simply be eliminated, and if they, god forbid, fought back, they were to be exterminated.

The Portuguese, having taken the lead in the exploration of West Africa, were able to take over the Arab trade of African slaves, and the New World, which needed labor to raise crops and do all that farming, mining, and felling, was simply a new market for their new trade. It was the English and Spanish who introduced slavery to these shores, with the Portuguese aiding and abetted the practice not to mention forcing an astonishing number of Africans to relocate to Brazil.

The colonists went along with the royal competition, including the genocide and the slavery, until it was no longer in their interest and they declared their independence, only to continue the genocide and the slavery on their own. And so here we are now, four centuries after 1619 and two and a half after 1776, paying the karma for those dirty European kings on their filthy continental thrones.                           

"Our religion," Shenandoah said about the Iroquois and other indigenous nations, "is all about thanking the Creator. That’s what we do when we pray. We don’t ask Him for things. We thank Him. We thank Him for the world and every animal and plant in it. We thank Him for everything that exists. We don’t take it for granted that a tree is just there. We thank the Creator for that tree. If we don’t thank Him, maybe the Creator’ll take that tree away... We are made from Mother Earth and we go back to Mother Earth. We can’t “own” Mother Earth. We’re just visiting here. We’re the Creator’s guests."

If only the "superior" Europeans were that enlightened, we might not be in the mess we see today.

 

The Crescent Heart, 26th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): It's cold.

The winter storm has passed and with minimal damage here in Atlanta. Other places can't say the same,  and I extend my deepest condolences to those without power or who suffered other misfortunes from the cold snow and ice. 

But now that it's gone, it left behind some bitter cold temperatures - the high temperature today (38°) occurred at midnight and dropped down to 23° as the night progressed. It was only above 32 for about an hour or two this afternoon but blustery winds made it feel even colder and it's forecast to drop down to 14° overnight. It was so cold today, I didn't take my alternating-day walk, even though it's a walking day 

This drafty old house, this pile of bricks on a hill, can't keep up with temperatures that low. The heat works fine down to about the mid/upper 20s, but below that the furnace just runs and runs but the inside temperatures drop down into the 60s, with noticeably colder spots in some nooks and crannies around the house.

This has happened before and I've gotten past it, but this year the cold is expected to last at least a week, with next weekend even colder than today. “When it’s cold, become one with the cold," Tozan advised. I may not have a choice in the matter. "Let the cold kill you," Tozan continued. 

2026 sucks, man. We should ask for our money back - this year is defective.

 

The Ancient Village, 25th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Although a massive winter storm tore through the Eastern United States yesterday and today, killing seven and leaving more than a million people without power, it wasn't much of a storm here in Atlanta. The temperature never dropped below freezing, and we had some overnight rain and rain all day today, but no snow, no accumulations of ice, and no extraordinary threat to life and property. I was correct - it turned out to be a big nothingburger ("Oh boy, right again!" - Laurie Anderson, Let x = x, 1982). 

The rain here finally ended at around sunset, and the temperature is expected to remain above freezing until about 3:00 am. It's going to be a cold week with with overnight lows in the 20s and even down to the teens by next weekend, and highs in the 30s and 40s. But with no rain or other precipitation in the forecast, I'm not worried.

Speaking of ice, they shot and killed another person in the streets on Minneapolis this weekend. Naturally, ICE, the DOJ, and the Stable Genius immediately labeled him an "domestic terrorist" and depicted him as a gun-wielding maniac attacking the occupying troops in Minnesota, but video clearly shows he was assisting an injured protester (he was a nurse) and holding a cell phone. I'm old enough to remember Kent State and when troops killing U.S. citizens on American soil was considered a bad thing ("I guess I just wasn't made for these times!" - Brian Wilson, I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, 1966).

 

 

Second Twelve, 24th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): The twenty-fourth day of Childwinter and the Year 526 of the Modern Era is called Second Twelve. We're four six-day weeks into the year and it's already shit. 

I walked a 5.5-mile Monroe today and now I'm back home waiting for the icepocalypse to arrive. They predicted this thing like ten days ago, and the wait has become nerve-wracking. The latest forecast has the precipitation finally arriving in Atlanta at around 9:00 pm tonight, but the temperatures are expected to stay at or above 32° all night. So the latest forecast for here is no snow, no ice, no "significant accumulations of ice," and no "extraordinary threat to life and property." 

I might see a dusting of snow and some ice on the driveway when I get up tomorrow, and the roads will probably be slippery in the morning, but I have nowhere to go anyway. 

It will be a lot worse up in the North Georgia Mountains, where the higher elevations will be a bigger factor that the higher latitudes. Good luck and best wishes to them and everyone else affected by this "monster storm," even if it looks like Atlanta will be spared after all the dire warnings. 

At least I now have a good stockpile of prepared salads and a lifetime supply of peanut butter to last me through the weekend, and at least now I don't have to worry about losing power and missing tomorrow's Patriots game.