Oh MAN is this fascinating stuff. It’s reeeeally interesting to see where The Sun is (or thinks it is) going with things, especially right now as the industry is as delicate as a fluffy dandelion puff.

But the tables have turned; now I’m in Pittsburgh, it snows all the damn time, and these people are hilariously lackadaisical about plowing, or canceling school, or giving a shit. I found myself earlier in the week creeping along snow-covered roads at 7 miles an hour with a deathgrip on the steering wheel. Dude behind me pulled a classic Snow Asshole tailgating move, and I drive even slower. I flip the news on when I get home, watch eagerly for school closings, and nothing. These people! Don’t they know there’s precipitation? Life should stand still when there’s precipitation! CLOSE DOWN THE TOWN!

So, OK, Baltimore, you can laugh at me now. I get it. But you’ve only got a few hours — all bets are off when the Steelers and the Ravens take the field. (I don’t follow football, but God help me if the Steelers don’t win today. I can’t take a town full of sad-panda football fans.)

We have yet more packing and dismantling to do, and phone calls to make, and temporary address changes to file. Next week we have an ill-timed stretch of promised dog-sitting to undertake, and I hope we can coincide that with some house hunting.

In Pennsylvania.

Buried the lead again! ha ha.

So the cat’s out of the bag, we’re packing up house and home and moving to Pittsburgh in, oh, three weeks or something ridiculous like that. After the dog-sitting but before Iain’s starts the new job. We’ll be living out of boxes in my in-laws’ spare room for the foreseeable future (starting in August), so my paltry posting will probably either skyrocket in frequency (I predict many Starbucks runs) or drop to near-record lows (inertia is my enemy). Just fair warning.

I have a big Moving Post I want to write, and of course a Farewell to Baltimore post, and lots of other things, but with so much to do and so many tiny little people trying to help me do it, I don’t figure you’d better hold your breath. The mind is willing but the dial-up won’t be able.

Obviously, having a child or two kind of saps your energy, as does dealing with the bizarrely difficult-to-use RingSurf web site that I was using to manage the participants, which is why my leadership of that ring dwindled and dwindled to pathetic, barely-comatose levels. So I finally gave up Blog Baltimore’s ghost, handing it over to Brian Tomasette and stepping out of his way. Please give him a hand for taking up the reins.

For its next incarnation:

the Mobtown Wire is a collection of Blogs and Independent writers of Baltimore, Maryland. Previously Blog Baltimore, the Mobtown Wire will be aggregating blog writers and providing a central news source written by and for residents of charm city.

*and Supa exits stage left*

• They are difficult to come up with
• They are generally boring
• they are (did I mention this?) difficult to come up with.

My sister and her boyfriend are here visiting and we are all plumb tuckered after a day at the Inner Harbor. I got some great pictures to share but that would require me finding my camera cable connector cord, and I think we’re just going to hang out in our flannel pants and watch ‘The Wire’ instead (never seen it! can you believe it?). Word.

Apparently the government is offering up to two $40 coupons toward a digital signal converter box for our perfectly adequate television, with which we use a set of rabbit ears to catch PBS Kids, Martha Stewart’s TV show, and the local news. I did not know that.

Also news to me: that the digital-signal switch, which happens less than a year from now (February 2009), does not force us non-cable-havin’ people to buy a whole new compatible television set (darn!) — just a converter box. Still, Himowitz makes a good point:

Never before has the government, by fiat, declared obsolete a perfectly good, working technology that’s almost universally available and so critical to public safety. And with so little real-world testing of its replacement.

Damn government.

Anyway. I am applying for the coupon today, intent on taking his advice and seeing whether I can get, say, NOVA to come in in high-def. If so: Sweet! If not — well, I’ll take the other part of his advice and let my congressmen know that this idea of theirs was crap. Only time will tell!

It’s the stuff we always use when I go camping with Iain, and now when I bathe the boys and get a whiff of peppermint I am immediately transported to the Teton Wilderness, where I hiked for 40 miles and cried for 40 miles and peed in the woods more times than I ever want to remember.

It also brings me back to the many weekends we’ve spent in a tent up at “the camp,” the family acreage in PA.

More peeing in the woods. Not so much crying, but then again I do nothing but sit around getting tan when we hang out at the camp. None of this hiking uphill both ways, fording an icy-cold river nonsense. Just bug-swatting.

Anyway, enough memory lane. Point? This stuff is good. Biodegradable, vegan, organic, all that good jazz. And all I had to do was dig it out of our camping supplies bin and stick it in the bathroom. Easy-peasy.

*You ever read a Doc Bronner bottle label? Like 20 square inches of 8 point font and many, many exclamation points. I love it. RIP, Doc.