Notes to you: Weird winter

Winter seems to have gone off on a brief vacation. On Sunday, while watching the NFL playoff games, I took a break to check out the weather. The thermometer said 47 F (+9C).

Huh? The calendar said Jan. 6. Just after New Year's. Up here, deep in the woods of the western U.P. of Michigan. Was that strange!

Then, on Monday, we were busy at work (editing photos, finishing up stories, laying out the paper on our computers, finishing last-minute stuff before the deadline). Outside, it was foggy. Then it was raining lightly. Walking down the alley to my house was a bit tricky--wet, smooth ice is never easy to walk on if you plan to stay upright. Not impossible; not easy, either.

The sidewalk to the back door of the house was even more treacherous, because the ice was under an inch or so of water. I eventually took the safer route and walked over the saturated snow. Then I had to run to the store, but that was uneventful.

A few hundred miles away, in the southeastern corner of Wisconsin, some tornadoes blew through. Tornadoes. In Wisconsin. On Jan. 6. How's that for strange? Glad it wasn't here.

Tomorrow, I've got a bizarre, busy day. An appointment with my cardiologist. A picture assignment. Around noon, I drive down to Iron Mountain for a number of things, including a visit to my mom. Then supper. Then off to a girls basketball game that night (Forest Park at North Dickinson, if you're interested). Then I go home. We're supposed to be getting light rain changing to light snow, but not much of either. So they say.

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Saw an interesting story this evening. It's about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is entertaining thoughts about running for president as an independent candidate. He had a meeting today in Norman, Okla., with a bipartisan group, and the headline of the Yahoo article was "Bloomberg, Moderates lament state of U.S."

It included this passage:

A joint statement read by the meeting's co-host, former U.S. Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, led off with the line: "America is in danger."

He went on to say that the country's standing in the world has sunk to unprecedented lows and problems such as budget deficits, energy supply and environmental degradation are not being addressed.

"We are failing to address them primarily because rampant partisanship has paralyzed the ability of government to act and lead," Nunn said.

Democrats and Republicans are more concerned with "energizing their bases" than appealing to the political center, he said.

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In other news, the race may be over. In fact, it may have just ended.

Not the presidential race. The next-generation DVD format war.

If you haven't been following it, there are two rival formats that have been trying to outjockey each other for high definition DVDs. One is called HD DVD, and the other is called Blu-Ray. The different studios have been supporting one format or the other.

But late last week, Warner Brothers Entertainment announced it would stop making its movies in HD DVD later this year and only issue Blu-Ray discs (along with regular DVDs) after that. Many articles I have read since say that the Warner decision decides the battle--Blu-Ray will be the winning/surviving format. Once Warners stops making HD DVD discs, Blu-Ray will have 70 percent of the market.

Of course, I've been around long enough to remember a big decision I had to make about 20 years ago: whether to get a VHS or a Betamax video recorder. I went with VHS for what seemed to me a very good reason: I could record longer on VHS tapes than on Betamax tapes, and they were less expensive to boot.

That was then. What about now?

I'm planning to sit this one out. The new TV I hope to buy later this year will be a digital model with a wide screen. But it's not going to be a wall-size model. The DVDs I have now? They're good enough for me. Maybe in time I'll feel different, but I don't think so.