Thanks for the Memories

Hello World, And so here we find ourselves at Holy Week, at least for the non-Orthodox among us, with Easter coming up hard and fast on Sunday already, and Peter Cottontail hippity-hopping down the bunny trail. This will give everyone a chance to parade around in their Easter finery, which around here would necessarily include their prettiest pastel long johns and fanciest furry ear muffs, and plenty of scarves and mittens to go around. I won't say this is the coldest winter I can ever remember, because I would have been wearing my bulky coat and leg warmers the whole time, but it's been consistently colder than normal, every day, and lasting much longer into the year than I can remember in a great big while - and don't forget, the dinosaurs and I can remember a very long time ago, gadzooks. It's true that we've had freak snowstorms in April over the years around here, but it seems like we've always had a few unseasonably warm days along the way in February or March, even the odd one in January here and there - but not this time around, and not by a long shot. We never could get out of Old Man Winter's icy grip for even a day at a time, and even the days that were bright and sunny had a biting edge to them that made you glad for fleece and hot chocolate, and don't spare the mini marshmallows, if you please. A scientific person might scoff at this idea as fanciful. with no independent corroboration to back up this hypothesis, and that the hard cold facts will not bear this out, but I stand firm with all the proof I need - and that is, this is the first time I can remember not hearing the ice cream truck around the hospital at any point from the beginning of the year up to now, when usually any sunny day above freezing is all it takes to get those bells ringing in our neighborhood. It may not be scientific, but I don't need to be hit over the head with a brass band to know when something is inescapably true. Speaking of brass bands and parades, it may seem impossible to believe, but apparently the day honoring the beloved patron saint of Ireland has transmogrified into more of a movable feast than usual, starting in February of all things, and just shooting off in every direction since then, begorrah. You can see in the local newspaper that communities all over the region have been tossing one great big Irish lollapalooza after another, on any old day from the beginning of February all the way up to the middle of April, making the saint of marching multitudes one of the longest-running anything-goes extravaganzas since our family's Christmas caravan, and I ought to know, by jingle. Meanwhile, the venerable St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City celebrated its 252nd cavalcade on Saturday, which was technically March 16 and not the saint's feast day on the 17th. Their official web site at www.nycstpatricksparade.org explains it this way: "The Parade starts at 44th Street at 11 am and is held every March 17th except when March 17th falls on a Sunday; it is celebrated the day before, Saturday the 16th, because of religious observances." In any case, the event went off without a hitch, and was also notably lacking in the annual brouhaha over who can march and who can't, with its attendant legal controversies and political mud-slinging in the press. Although I suppose that under the circumstances, we should call it beer-slinging instead. Green beer, that is. While it may have been too cold to fight over the annual Wearing o' the Green in the Big Apple, there's still plenty of reminders that spring is indeed on its way, however contrary the weather might seem to this immutable truth. They tell me that spring bulbs, birds, shrubs and trees are naturally prompted to prepare for the upcoming season based on length of day, and not temperature, and they just get up and get going at the right time of year, regardless of the weather of the moment. The birds have been singing their hearts out for weeks now, which is a cheerful earful that would be hard to beat, and as welcome as a breath of spring - without the icicles attached, thanks not. Our crocus have finally opened in earnest, with perky splashes of lavender and purple all over the yard, and I even spotted one lonesome blue squill along the driveway, and one orphan Glory of the Snow, the lone survivors of the landscapers and roofers assaulting our property for extended periods at a time, alas. Just now the windflowers and white anemones are starting to gear up and put on a show, and there's even one bright explosion of sunny yellow daffodils against the rock wall, which is a happy prospect that never fails to delight in the bleakest days. So while the thermometer is still stuck in the frostbite range more suited to December's deep freeze, slowly but surely, we can begin to see those hardy harbingers that give us hope for better days ahead. Mind you, that's not just the green beer talking, by all the saints. Last week at work, I went downstairs to report to our crack IT team that I was getting an error message in Outlook, that made it impossible to send or receive any email. Actually, I greeted this development with unbridled euphoria, since business email tends to be an onerous chore that wastes valuable time that could be spent on real work instead, not to mention, playing Minesweeper or checking Lottery results, or so they say. But my emancipation was short-lived, as people in other departments complained that they were unable to reach out to me electronically, and I had no choice but to invite the evil minions from the nether regions in to solve the problem. At the time, my computer was behaving as its usual sluggish self, which I have long since resigned myself to, but was an unwelcome surprise to the tech, who apparently was used to speedier performance from the equipment he comes in contact with. A cursory examination of the configuration proved what he already suspected, that the system was woefully under-powered for what it was being called on to do, and badly needed an upgrade. He said he would come back and bring me more memory for the computer, which would eliminate just about all of its problems at once. Of course, I should have recognized this as good news, and been grateful for the improvement, but I found that the irony was too much to bear. I couldn't help but laugh and point at my head, and I told him that where I actually need more memory is up there instead, way more than whatever the computer may think that it needs, and that's not just the dinosaurs whistling Dixie, believe me. After all, the computer already has many megabytes of memory as it is, while all I can lay claim to are my last two lonely addled brain cells, which I have renamed RAM and ROM for the occasion, whose capacity for remembering anything is not only so volatile in the short term as to be practically useless, but also so sporadic in the long term that it borders on hallucinations of fabricated memories that never really existed in the first place. If anybody needs an upgrade, it's certainly my cranium and not the hospital computer, that's for sure, and as soon as they perfect that process, I'll be the first one on line to sign up - that is, if I can remember what I was there for, and not ask for two tickets to see Justin Bieber instead. Of course, the green beer doesn't help either, but on the other hand, I think in Justin Bieber's case, I would be happy to make an exception. Elle