You will notice that the ParkerCam isn't being updated today. Parker is in his crate, which I had hoped not to use, but circumstances required it:

Wow, do I have a lot of movies to see.

Update, 11:08 pm CT: Wow, Scorsese finally won!

Last update, 11:14 pm CT: Scorsese won again! It never rains...

One more update, 11:18 pm CT: MSNBC just sent a news alert out about the Best Actress Oscar™. I'm wondering: who is checking email from a place they can't see the actual Oscars broadcast? Anyone? Bueller?

Through the ParkerCam I just got to watch my darling soon-to-be-crated-from-now-on puppy disemboweled my comforter:

Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (sub.req.) points out that serious energy conservation does not equal economic disaster:

[T]he assumption, explicit or implicit, that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live...is false. Let me tell you about a real-world counterexample: an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.

The name of the economy? California.

After play group this evening I (a) wrestled a 24-kilo dog into a bathtub, (b) continued to wrestle said dog who did not want clean water dumped on him repeatedly, which was ironic because (c) less than half an hour before he had rolled around in a mud puddle the size of Connecticut at the dog park.

Poor Parker, he won't be going to the play group much until either (a) the mud in the dog park freezes or (b) the mud dries out.

But in a strange twist, right now he's lying on the floor gnawing on a bully stick, peaceful as a bishop. I do love this puppy most of the time.

Update: As I wrote those words, he started re-arranging the room. Oy.

Parker, a black dog, hangs out on a white couch (because they no longer make this one and natural cotton was the only color slipcover they had left), which is covered in a slightly greenish fleece blanket (because it has an expected lifespan of two months and cost $3 at Target):

Oy.

It seems the weather forecast was correct: The 10 am (1600 UTC) temperature at O'Hare was 2°C, the first time it's been above freezing in Chicago since January 27th, and only the third time since January 15th.

I'm going to go outside and bask in the warmth right now...

I may have had my fill of snow, but Parker hasn't:

It's possible that the temperature in Chicago could go above freezing this afternoon for the first time since January 27th. This is the longest stretch of below-freezing weather we've had since I returned home in 2000. Hey, I like records as well as the next athlete, but I'm pretty tired of this one.

Stay tuned.

I don't know what Parker was saying to Dexter, but it does look like Dexter is taking the kid under his wing, so to speak: