Tree Dodging

Lisa is normally awake later than me and I try to not disturb her when I get up to go to work while I'm up here. This morning, she left a note to me to watch out for fallen tree branches along the path to her father's house. I appreciated this because the sun doesn't rise until nearly an hour after I walk over there at this time of the year, and the path isn't lit. As I left the trailer, I found about an inch of snow had fallen overnight (yay! better than the constant rain!) and sure enough, more branches had fallen across the path. I was surprised that the branch that fell wasn't the one I was expecting to be the next one down — Lisa and I plan on cutting down that sagging, over-extended branch if we get clear weather to do so.

This is a minor fall by the standards of this tree. Later today when there's more light to do so I will go out and drag the fallen branches to the side, where Lisa and I will reduce them to manageable pieces when we get a chance and when it's safe to use the electric chainsaw out there. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the view of the snow-covered field in preference to the soggy, rain-soaked landscape we've had since before Christmas. Today we're expecting snow showers, but the next few days after today may actually be free of rain or snow.

A YA Hugo?

As reported by Cheryl, Chris Barkley has proposed a new Hugo Award category for Best Young Adult Book. He also posted the proposal to The List That Shall Not Be Named, where some people said the discussion should be kept because otherwise "People Will Talk." There have been a lot of messages on TLTSNBN, mostly rehashing old arguments. I suggest that Cheryl has created the forum that is most open to the public for discussion, with Chris' FB page second. Unlike the person who wanted to keep the discussion contained solely to a group of SMOFS so that people wouldn't talk about it ("people" in this case presumably meaning the rest of the WSFS membership at least), I don't mind people knowing that this sort of thing is going on.

On a tangentially related subject, one of the most common arguments raised against any new Hugo Award category is that there are "too many categories," and that having more categories makes the existing ones less valuable. I disagree soundly with this argument for reasons I've stated in many places including here in my own LJ. But since the logical conclusion of this argument is the elimination of all of the categories (it would make the Hugo Award infinitely prestigious), I've been sorely tempted to introduce a series of constitutional amendments that would repeal every category, one at a time. I wonder how many people would show up at the Business Meeting for that?

(If you want to discuss the YA Hugo proposal, I'd like to suggest you go over here and comment there instead. Any discussion on this post should, IMO, be limited to the meta-issues I've raised, not the specifics of Chris's YA Hugo proposal. Thank you.)

White New Year, Anyone?

Lisa's father came into my "office" in his dining room and suggested I look out the window, as the snow had started falling in earnest.

( Let it snow )

I decided that I'd better go get those branches out of the path between here and Lisa's trailer, so I went and retrieved my work gloves, kitted up a little bit, and headed for the Gap-Toothed Tree after sweeping the sidewalk between Lisa's father's house and his garage.

( Shedding Tree is Shedding )

This isn't a terribly worrisome snowstorm. It looks like we might get three or four inches of snow, and much of it will probably melt soon, although the next few days are forecast to be cold enough that some of it may stick around until New Year's Day. I hope so, actually: it's nicer looking and somewhat drier than the muddy glop that surrounded us for the past week of "warm" storms. We need a few days of no rain to let the ground finish soaking up what we've received so far.