Sun Dogs & Moon Dogs!

OK, here's something I hadn't seen before. Apparently, the conditions in Fargo are just right for the phenomena known as sun dogs and moon dogs.

When it's cold enough and the atmosphere is full of ice crystals, the sun and moon get rainbow halos around them.

I received a call at the courthouse this afternoon from my colleague J., who was out running an errand. "Get to a window," he commanded. The sun dogs were out. It was a little cloudy today, so the full effect was not seen. Also, I only had my camera phone, and could not get a good shot of them – the rainbow was overwhelmed by the sun.

I had better luck tonight, when Jen called me away from tucking in Katie (and called Katie, too), to check out the night sky. This is the lower arc of the rainbow that is totally encircling the moon here tonight:

I stuck the camera and tripod out the back door onto the porch into the zero-degree weather, and shivered while it took a 13-second exposure. Apparently, you only get moon dogs when the moon is full – lucky us!

When sun dogs appeared over Sweden in the 16th century, they were thought to be omens of God's forthcoming revenge on the Swedish ruler. I will avoid saying that America should be so lucky.

Halfway!

Just out of curiosity, about two weeks ago I made up a spreadsheet counting the days we have left – not that I'm desperate to get out of here. I'm just a curious guy.

Today is the halfway point. We arrived July 12, 2006. If we stay until Aug. 15, 2007, it'll be exactly 400 days.

We've spent months getting to know Fargo and the surrounding areas, and now it's time to slowly turn those hellos into a long series of goodbyes.

Employed!

It looks like this lawyering thing just might stick. I have accepted an offer from Latham & Watkins to join their D.C. office this fall. Very exciting. They're California's leading firm, and ranked in the top 10 nationally. The D.C. office is very well regarded, with a lineup of terrific litigators and, uh, now, me! They're known as perhaps the best-managed law firm in the country, despite recent hiring lapses.

It's a global firm, with about 1,800 lawyers worldwide, over 200 of them in Washington. They have offices in Barcelona, Brussels, Chicago, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, New Jersey, New York, Northern Virginia, Orange County, Paris, San Diego, San Francisco, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Tokyo, as well as Washington, D.C. Milan!

The firm's biggest office is New York, with over 300 lawyers, then Los Angeles, with a few less, I believe. Only four in Milan. I wonder what they do, and if I can learn to do it also?

"So, can I accept a job offer during the clerkship?" I asked my colleague P., who is wise in these ways. "Sure!" she replied.

Terrific! Big law firms toss new lawyers surprisingly large amounts of money when they sign up – especially those coming from clerkships – and it'd be nice to pay off a few bills while we're here.

"You can accept the offer, but you can't take any bonuses until the clerkship is over," she elaborated. Damn.

It turns out there are a few loopholes – I can accept "reimbursements," which are technically not bonuses, but which look a lot like them to me. The firm will very kindly pay for the bar-prep class I already took, and the Maryland bar dues I've already paid. Those weren't cheap.

Jen's been hassling me to see "The Firm," the 1993 Tom Cruise movie about an extraordinarily generous but eventually quite sinister law firm. Ha ha ha.

What the Kids are Up To.

Well, it's minus 2 out at the moment, with a wind chill of minus 25. What are the kids doing to keep active? you ask.

Well, nothing outside. Ellie is taking pre-ballet every Saturday morning at the Brant School of Dance Arts, a cozy studio up the road from us. We have ordered what sounds like a very elaborate costume for her spring recital, which, fortunately and unfortunately, falls on the evening of the day of the Fargo Marathon, May 19. The good news is, we'll have a big crowd of grandparents in town, many of whom are running some part of the marathon. The bad news is that we'll probably need spatulas to scrape us out of our chairs after the recital that night. Not clear how we're going to handle the 6-hour dress rehearsal she's required to do that day.

Joey is taking tae kwon do Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays after school at Carter's Martial Arts Academy. It's going well, but Joey is making only slow progress toward the goal I set for him, which is to learn to break people's necks with his mind.

Katie and I are taking guitar lessons from Colin Blaine. If you Google "fargo guitar teacher," he comes up first. Colin plays in a couple of bands at night, and teaches a steady lineup of students all week long. We catch him at 5:30 on Fridays for an hour. I was advised that instruction like this is quite reasonable in Fargo, and man, is it – just $28 for the two of us for the hour! Folks' eyes in D.C. popped when they heard that.

Katie's on a 3/4-size Jay Jr. acoustic guitar, which she received for Christmas (right). I resisted buying her the pink model with a heart-shaped sound hole. I borrowed my Dad's guitar, which has sat idle for, oh, 25 years or so. When he handed it to me when we were back in Maryland over Christmas, I realized it was the first time I'd ever been allowed to touch it – it was one of the few items in the house totally off-limits to the kids when we were growing up.

Colin's very patient with us. I haven't seen him wince once when we hit a particularly ugly chord, which is several times a session. He is especially respectful of Katie's efforts, which goes a long way with me.

The picture above is from Colin's Web site, and, personally, it's what convinced me to go with him. A quick look at Colin and his site convinced my pal Mike. "YOU *MUST* SIGN UP. *RIGHT NOW.*" Mike wrote. "THIS guy, clearly, will set you both STRAIGHT on rock'n'roll."

Katie had her fingernails trimmed down short to be able to play, a sacrifice for her art I didn't quite grasp the magnitude of beforehand. Apparently, she took a great deal of pride in her longish girly nails – who knew?:

The lot of 'em are taking swimming lessons at the downtown Y every Tuesday and Thursday nights for a few weeks. Unlike in Rockville, where parents have to line up at 4 a.m. at the pool the day swim-class registration opens, we were able to slip the kids in with a telephone call at the last moment. They even all go at the same time! Amazing! Ellie's class is only 20 minutes long, while Katie and Joey go for 40 minutes.

Cold!

About a week ago, I thought, man, we were told winter was going to start for real in October around here, and while we've had jabs of cold, there's been nothing sustained like I expected. And it's January already! I was thinking of writing a Fargoing entry that said, more or less, Hey! Bring it on!

Well, on it has done been brung. Last Friday brought a high of -9 and a low of -13 while I was out of town. Yesterday was a high of 16, and a low of -12. It's a balmy 17 right now (wind chill of 2), and we're expecting highs in the mid-20s for the next ten days or so. Lows are forecast to be in the single digits – much higher than the Weather Service has actually been reporting these past few days; we'll see who's right.

Here's how the cold snap is affecting things:

• Windshield-washer fluid sprays onto the windshield and freezes there. There's some sort of trick to getting the glass clear, which I manage to do only accidentally and occasionally.
  
  
• The radio knobs in the van are hard to turn.
  
  
• Oh, and yes: The cold seems to have finally killed the alternator in the truck. It breathed its last on the interstate last night with Jen driving, Katie on board, and, fortunately, me just a few minutes away in the van to rescue them. Jen has her nightmares about winter here, but mine was pretty close to family members being stranded at night along a highway. I also have a blizzard nightmare that hasn't presented itself yet.
  
  
• Best of all: the furnace in the house can't quite keep up.* I expected that cold weather would just mean horrendous energy bills as the furnace worked full-time to heat the house. It turns out that full-time isn't quite good enough; the house is running about 8 degrees colder than the thermostat is set. It's still comfortable inside, but I'm wondering what it will look like if we get a string of -20 days.
  

This weather is not hard to walk around in for short periods, though – it's not very windy, and the sun is shining brightly. If you have to get from a car to a school, say, it's not uncomfortable to make the walk with your jacket unzipped.

It's almost time to try the fun cold-physics experiments; if you blow bubbles in the cold, when they pop, they burst into shiny crystals. The kids have seen this; I haven't. The one I'm really looking forward to filming is throwing a bucket of boiling water into the air, and having it all freeze before it hits the ground.

* Edit: Change the filter in the furnace, and you'd be surprised how well it works. Oops. Glad that occurred to me before we froze to death or paid someone to come out and look at it.

Oh, terrific.

Hey, it's 10 below zero in Fargo right now, with a wind chill of 34 below. Great time to get outta town, right?

Well, it turns out you have to pick your destination with some care. I've been in St. Louis with Judge B. and his staff all week, and made plans to enjoy the holiday weekend in a more temperate climate with some buddies.

Under a headline of "Ice storm threatens chaos," and a subhed of "Storm also expected to hit St. Louis, Missouri, hard," CNN.com is putting those plans, um, on ice:

"This is a one-in-maybe-15- to 25-year event," CNN severe weather expert Chad Myers said Friday of the forecast freezing rain, sleet and snow... Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, up to St. Louis, Missouri, could see "devastating consequences," Myers warned Friday. "You won't be able to get in or out of St. Louis tomorrow."

Here's a picture from The Weather Channel:

Geez! The guys have either landed here, or are about to, so the weekend is safe, even if we have to watch hotel TV for the foreseeable future. Getting out might not be so easy.