"Hold my beer and watch this'

Last night they began saying the magic word ... snow!

It is coming early to Buffalo this year.

I have no problem with the first snow fall because then the neighborhood grows quiet and I get to cross-country ski and roast chestnuts and eat pomegranates which, we just started doing that tonight. They had a huge table of pomegranates ...


... at Jubilee! And a big sign over them saying "Pomegranates Are Here!"

When I was in California I missed all this coming-of-winter business. I did not exactly mind but it felt strange to be missing it. There is something exciting about it. When I was in California I had left so suddenly no one knew I was gone and I was still on various email lists and everything when the snow jokes began going around.

This was a joke that reached me in California that I loved.

"Ninety-nine percent of people, when their car veers into an icy ditch, yell @#98#$*!" the joke went. "The other one percent are Buffalonians. They say, 'Hold my beer and watch this.'"

Ha, ha! Leonard Pennario laughed about that too when I told it to him. Because he was born in Buffalo he was allowed.

Last night whatever TV station Howard was watching actually sent a reporter millions of miles so she could go stand in Cattaraugus County and they could film her with this wet lazy snow falling on her.

What a job!

I hope they at least let her say, "Hold my beer and watch this."