Why does a snowstorm seem to be so distracting? We’ve had snow showers forecast for today for several days. Only Saturday night did that change to a winter storm warning, with 4 to 8 inches expected in our parts. For some reason, this storm has not had the media build-up that the last one did. The press has barely mentioned this one. Still, third snowstorm in 40 days makes this the snowiest winter since 2002-03. My mind today is too much on snow and not enough on engineering.

For the month of February, so far, I have been a good boy about my writing career. Just a few moments ago I fired off a freelance submittal that I had been working on for a couple of weeks, and which I ran by the writers guild last Tuesday. I have written and published four new articles at Suite101.com in February, including two over the weekend. I haven’t posted four in one week since–what was it, August? I would love to be able to post four new ones every week, and see if I can get un-stuck as far as revenue and page view growth is concerned. Actually, beginning in January I did see an uptick in revenue, both total revenue and revenue per article per month. It’s still pretty small, but at least it’s heading in the right direction.

Over the weekend I read an old Writers Digest magazine that I picked up somewhere. And I subscribed to Poets and Writers magazine, with an incredible one-year deal. I normally look at this mag at Barnes & Noble, it’s so expensive. But it’s about my favorite writers magazine. Of course, the checkbook is so low right now I probably shouldn’t have. I’ll get a $25 payout from Suite101 tomorrow, so I guess I earned it.

Some other ideas have begun to gel. I have about twenty Suite101 articles beginning to cue up, with six or so having some research already done. A Bible study that’s been on my mind for a few months has found its way to paper lately. I’m about to work on my novel in progress, which will make me feel incredibly good. And almost all my chores around the house are up to date.

The last three paragraphs have nothing to do with the snowstorm. I tried to find a master metaphor between snow and engineering and writing, but alas I’ve failed. So I’ll simply say: Let it snow! I’ll bring home some work tonight, some studying I need to do for in-house classes to teach, and spend a joyous eight hours at the kitchen table tomorrow, planning and writing three or four classes.