AFTER THE STORM

The storm is over, the sun is out, and look, the dancing snow couple is gone (see photo, previous post).

The same lady who took a photo of her farm yard the other day during the blizzard has posted a new photo (to KFYR TV Sky Spy pictures). And as you can see, there is nothing there where the snow people were. I think they have gone away until another blizzard comes. And I think blizzards make them delirious with joy.

Seeing the snow people reminded me of the wonderful video I got for Kristen when she was little, Raymond Briggs' "The Snowman." If you've never seen it, you should rent it or buy it (it's on DVD now!) It is fantastic. It has no dialogue whatsoever, but features incredibly beautiful music. It's the story of a snowman who comes alive, and then magically flies the little English boy who created him to a merry, musical gathering of snow men and women. I've always thought of it as a Christmas video, but I think from now on it will be my blizzard video.

For those of you who expressed concern about my husband being stuck on Thursday night, don't worry, he was given a push right away. Almost everyone is a Good Samaritan in North Dakota, and you can always count on them in a storm. In fact, there are teenage boys with their four-wheel drives who think it's fun to go out in a blizzard to help people with a push or shoveling out. There are folks who fire up their snowmobiles to deliver medicine and get people to the hospital. The people who were stranded at the Bismarck Greyhound bus depot on Thursday (some had NEVER seen snow before) were given food and beds by the Red Cross. That's one reason why Dan and I continue to live in North Dakota, even during a nasty winter.

I haven't been outdoors since late Thursday afternoon and I am starting to get cabin fever, trapped here alone with the dogs. My sis and decided not to go to lunch today. She lives in a small town five miles outside of Bismarck, and the roads out in the country are still bad. I am at loose ends. I did start a good book last night - "Sepulchre" by Kate Mosse. It drew me in right away, as I thought it would because I loved her previous book, "Labyrinth."

But today, I didn't feel like reading. Instead, I once again tried to post a Rich Text post to my blog and once again, I failed. There are several things about Blogger that really bug me, including having a very limited choice of fonts, not being able to wrap text around a photo, and not being able to control spacing between paragraphs.

For about the third time in a week, I composed a post with wrap-around text, a nice font that looks like handwriting, bullets, framed pictures, a banner and more. All for naught.

Tell me, people who use Blogger, how do you do counteract this? I specifically downloaded a free trial of Microsoft Word 2007 because when I took the class I found out that you can supposedly write a Rich Text post and send it right to your blog with format intact. I wrote a post and found that I could indeed send it - but all the lovely images and formatting had disappeared.

Then, I wrote to Blogger Help and was advised to use Microsoft Windows Live Writer instead. I found myself to be frustrated there as well. (Let it be known right now, that I am an older person who merged onto the information highway via a tricycle.)

So now, I'm asking all you Bloggers with a capital "B" for help (in non-techy language, please!)