Christopher Donahue

Note to self: Try not to start a new job the day after the start of Daylight Savings Time (DST).

Yes my fine feathered friends, I started a new job today a mere twenty-eight hours after setting the clocks ahead an hour for DST. Not a good idea. I went to work feeling like I caught the red-eye from the West Coast. The West Coast of Kamchatka. Open-cockpit all the way. Me at the controls.

I started the day FRIED. First day anxiety had me tossing and turning all-the-short-night-long. It is not a good sign when you get up before your cats. Normally ours cats wake us up, but thanks to DST I got up at 6 AM (human/cat body clock time 5AM) and roused the cats who looked at me as if to sleepily say WTF!?!?!

So I started drinking coffee. Lots of coffee.  And espresso.  Which was great. I felt and came across as a hung-over, Alzheimer victim with the shakes.

At some point, I said the hell with it and started telling my new co-workers I just flew in from Kamchatka.

They must have believed it because they are having me back tomorrow.

copyright 2013 Magnus Incognito

 The Snowman cometh, and the Snowman dumpeth.

And what a fine mess it was.

The wind howled all night. The snow drifted. There was thunder and lightning (a little). I expected a knock on the door at any moment from Yukon Cornelius. And the snow came down and down. Several times I woke up and looked out the window to see the gale-force, wind-blown snow streaming horizontally past the street light.

We slept late, then got up and had a nice breakfast to fortify ourselves for clearing the snow.  The white stuff was easily waist-deep in the driveway. Close to 30 inches. I wore a bright orange scarf for snow blowing so if I got lost in the drifts they would find my body in the Spring. Four hours later I was done.

Overall, it was all a lot of fun. A good, old fashion blizzard.

But after four hours of snow blowing, any last flakes of nostalgia for an old-fashioned winter are gone in the snow blown wind.

I’m ready for Spring.

copyright 2013 Magnus Incognito

What the Snowman giveth, unfortunately he won’t be taking away.

One of the most powerful winter storms to hit New England is presently buffeting our house.  It is friday night and we are nice and cozy and having fun riding out this mega-blizzard. We are well stocked for supplies: food, water, batteries, radios, etc…but our greatest concern is whether the power will go off. We shall see.

Round about now I am beginning to wonder about the wisdom of challenging Old Man Winter about what a lame winter we were having. Apparently, not only does he read this blog but he’s concerned about his reputation. Let me just make this clear for the record…

The Old Man is BACK!

I shoveled a few inches around 1PM.   At 5 PM, I fired up my small snow blower and cleaned up probably another three inches of snow. At 8 PM, I stuck my head out into a howling gale of a blizzard and decided to go right back inside. It is so bad out there I have no choice but to wait until morning , or noon tomorrow, to  deal with this titanic snowfall. One thing for certain at this point, things won’t be totally cleaned up until monday.

This one is shaping up to be the Storm of the Century, and the last century too.

copyright 2013 Magnus Incognito

Often, I suspect no one is reading this blog and obviously, I really can’t be sure. But I do suspect Old Man Winter has been checking it out,  because since the last post-date we’ve been having a spell of real winter here in Boston.

First off, we have had a nice stretch of really cold weather after an unseasonably warm start. And I mean COLD: eye-popping, snot-freezing, Arctic COLD.  This latest deep-freeze hung over New England for a week. I could imagine that viewed from space, the region’s power-grid had to be glowing like the wires in your toaster. It was so cold warming up the car was definitely not an option. I would head out 20 minutes before going anywhere and get the car started. I’d also make sure the bird feeder was full because I knew my avian buddies were burning mega-calories in that arctic chill.

Part of Winter Weather fun is of course getting bundled up. Breaking out all the funky winter wear that you finally realize is designed by necessity not style. I broke out my trusty rabbit-fur bomber hat complete with furry chin strap. My head looked like a beige soccer ball with fur sticking out along the seams. I had an appointment at Kenmore square and decided to walk down Commonwealth Ave to the next T stop. Not a good idea. It was a magnificently clear blue winter day. I was the only crazy guy outside- at noon no less. The wind was howling, adding a sub-zero wind-chill to the jaunt, and after about a hundred yards it felt as if I had NO PANTS ON! It was that cold. I was never so thankful to get to a ratty T station and get out of the cold.

Tonight, it is a bit warmer. A light snow is falling and everything looks beautiful. The snow has turned from flakes to ice and the driving is getting hazardous. The limbs of the trees are all accented with white. I walked home and the snow on the sidewalk looked like the frosting on Vienna finger cookies when you take the top off to save a few calories.

Change is often inevitable, and it certainly seems like Global Warming is indeed real.

But I’m Old School. I will always want my winters to be winter.

copyright 2013 Magnus Incognito

It was just a few weeks ago I was dealing with the novelty of a New Year, and now here we are with January almost half over. One novelty I can’t get over is the lame-ass winter we are having. I am old school and if there is one thing I like, and one thing I miss, it’s a bastardly nasty, unremittingly, remorseless three month assault by Old Man Winter! The kind of day after day relentless drubbing of cold, gray weather and backbreaking shoveling that builds the character. This winter has been decidedly short on snow and only seems to dip down into the teens a few days a week before unseasonal thaws.

Basically, I am disappointed with this winter’s lack of ferocity because of the amount of preparation I put in getting ready for it. Several years ago we had a winter that broke records for snowfall, and increases in the divorce and suicide rates. The winter of 2010-2011 went into the record book as one of the most brutal in memory in New England. One of the hallmarks of a brutal winter is that it starts before the winter season. The winter of 2010-was no exception it got underway with a blizzard in October and didn’t let up until April. Cold, no sunlight, and snowstorm after snowstorm made for a disheartening three month wintry smack-down. Few things are more discouraging than shoveling snow so you can have an empty place to shovel more snow.

To be ready for the next blizzard-fest, I bought a bigger snow-blower. But most importantly, I took the time to get physically conditioned to shovel snow. This is not easy to do in the non-winter months.  Starting in June, I went to the beach and shoveled sand for a half-an hour, three times a week. I used my plastic snow shovel. At first, people thought I was crazy and some took cell phone pictures, but after a couple of weeks, other people starting joining me on a regular basis.

Shoveling sand on the beach, under the hot summer sun, turned out to be a great work-out. I lost weight and got in great shape. It’s just my shoulders are really huge now.

copyright 2013 Magnus Incognito

Here are a few thoughts on the 2012 before we go out to a New Year’s Eve Party.

There were many remarkable occurrences that happened this year but one of the most tragic was that over a billion people viewed Gangnam Style on Youtube. It is an absolute tragedy to think of the time wasted by a billion people watching a music video that can best be described as, pardon my Korean, shitless. The video sucked, the music sucked, the dancing sucked, and Psy’s face sucked. The dancing brat that looks like Psy sucked too. I wanted to personally appeal to Kin-Jong-un to make South Korea a lake of fire to prevent Psy from making another video.  At the very least I wanted my “view” back from Youtube. Honey Boobo is better than that!

New Year’s Eve: It used to be about Auld Lang Syne, drinking with friends and besotted romance. It used to be about being inside with good friends, good food and good drink, and ringing in the New Year together.  Then some Urban Secular-Culturalists (a.k.a Moonbats), working for a mayor’s office near you, (read Boston) came up with an utterly stupid event called First Night. For the uninitiated, First Night is the night that comes right after Last Night. In this instance, the Last Night in question is New Year’s Eve for those of us who are still using the pre-French Revolution calendar. The whole idea behind First Night is that the dark and the cold are really social constructions that can be ignored instead of the actual unpleasant and hostile physical conditions of which they actually happen to be.

Living in Boston, it took me a while to develop the level of hipster-ness necessary to really appreciate how cool it is to stand out in the dark and cold and watch shitty performances by shitty artists and musicians. I am wondering, will the synchronized bike-messengers be performing on the Common this year? I heard Psy was going to make it but he was tired out from playing the White House.

Notwithstanding all that…HAPPY NEW YEAR!

copyright 2012 Magnus Incognito

For months now, the media has made me terrified of going over the Fiscal Cliff and now it appears that we will indeed be going over this budgetary precipice in a matter of days. No way back.

On the Brightside, at least will all go over together.

Yes, we divided Americans will finally all be united as we hurtle over and plummet down, the ominous and apocalyptic fiscal cliff. Now that I think about it, I have been trying to come up with something we could all do together anyways, so going over the cliff might as well be it.

But obviously, the problem isn’t going over the cliff, it is what will happen when we hit bottom? Just what awaits us down there? The Last Ditch? Or perhaps, shortly after hitting bottom we find we are at The End of the Road?

Maybe I am presumptuous in even thinking we will survive the fall. What if we go over the cliff and find out were at The End of the Line? I don’t know what we will do if it is the End of the Line. Perhaps, I should have taken going over the fiscal cliff more seriously? So many questions. So little time. Unfortunately, I was distracted by the Mayan Calendar-end -of-the world- false-doomsday of last week.

But there is one thing for sure. It will be a softer landing for the wealthy than for the vulnerable in our society. Our elected-class, both democrats and republicans, will all be able to send their kids to good schools, and take vacations, and go on living comfortable lives for their families and friends, no matter how bad the economy will get for everyone else.

When we get to the bottom of the fiscal cliff will we find out one thing for sure: the Buck doesn’t stop there for our execrable elected representatives.

copyright 2012 Magnus Incognito

Christmas is almost here and I have to admit it has been one of the most daunting Yuletide Seasons in memory.

Christmas is fundamentally a celebration of the birth of Christ. But as our society evolves, an ironic turn of phrase if ever there were one, there are less and less people who celebrate Christmas for what it really is. Instead, in our increasingly secular society, which worships the supremacy of the individual, people celebrate Christmas for whatever they think Christmas should be. And this personal celebrating of Christmas has “evolved” to include gift-buying, watching football and impromptu expressions of atheist bigotry directed at Christmas in particular and religion in general. All in all, it makes the meaning of Christmas even more poignant: Christ was born among us, in the lowliest of circumstances, to save us from ourselves.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting massacre has left a horrific pall over this year’s Holiday Season regardless of one’s religious or secular beliefs. Words can’t begin to express the significance of this tragedy. But there is one word I have not seen used in reference to the shooting, and it is a word that fits the crime perfectly: obscene. The murder/massacre of innocent school-children and teachers by a mentally disturbed individual was quite simply a vile, disgusting act of depravity. Adding to horror of this disaster was the numbing feeling that the Sandy Hook shooting is just the latest mass-shooting, just the latest mass-killing by a deranged individual. Until the next shooting.

God save us from ourselves. And please hurry up about it.

copyright 2012 Magnus Incognito

All my life I have loved books and reading. Now that I think of it I probably loved books before I could read.  In the beginning was The Word, but in my earliest beginning there were the pictures, then the words.  This is an example of me rambling.

Two nights ago, I reached a milestone in my life-long love of books.  I reached the half-way mark in my effort to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica Concise Edition. All 2114 pages of it, one page a day. I started my encyclopedic journey on January 15, 2010. I usually read a page before I go to bed, so that would make it a page a night. Periodically, I read ahead enough so if I take a vacation where carting around a big, ten-pound hard cover book isn’t practical I can take some time off and not fall behind. I really lead an exciting life don’t I?!?!?

Well, yes it is exciting when you reach page 1057 after starting out almost three years ago!   The journey has been a lot of fun and it has been a wonderful pleasure learning all kinds of interesting facts. When I started out my wife wouldn’t let me buy a complete set of the standard Encyclopedia Britannica. Ironically, since I started reading both the standard and compact edition are out of print

The projected end date of my journey is October 30, 2015. I hope I make it. You never know.  There’s not enough time to elaborate on all the trivia, useless and otherwise, that I have learned along the way.  But I can say that the range of human knowledge is indeed, encyclopedic.

 copyright 2012 Magnus Incognito

Thanksgiving Day has come and gone. And while the holiday recedes into the past, I will take time now to recollect the happy moments that will warm my chestnuts in the following years.

We had a small celebration that was marked by a lot of arduous kitchen prep work. Not since I worked for minimum wage in a restaurant as a dishwasher and prep-guy have I worked so hard in a kitchen. My mother-in-law came down form Vermont so that she and my wife could cook a Thanksgiving Day dinner together. It was fun, and it was nice that mother and daughter could spend that time together. I peeled potatoes.

The holidays have really changed for me in the past several years. My mother and sister died two years ago and there is a real “homemaking” gap in the lives of us surviving family members.

All this has reminded me of Clearances, one of many magnificent poems by Seamus Heaney. In the poem, Heaney is at his mother’s death-bed and remembers how they never were so close as when they used to peel potatoes together in the kitchen.

We all have so much to be thankful for.

Copyright 2012 Magnus Incognito