This weekend we are supposed to get hit by two winter storms, the second hot on the heels of the first one. Yesterday it was close to 70 degrees, and today it's 40 degrees colder. It drizzled all morning but big flakes have finally started to fall.

One of my cousins from back east was here for a day then driving up to the high mountains where the forecast was for 6 to 12 inches of snow, but every time I look at the various traffic cameras up there, the roads are a little damp at best, and the sun is shining. We all know weather forecasting is an inexact (I'm not going to bring up the word 'science') art.

Speaking of science, this cousin is an astrophysics professor at Harvard. He was telling me about how one of our cousin-in-laws is trying to invent a perpetual motion machine so Dr. Astro offered to look at his equations and prototype to see if he could offer any suggestions. "Because, you know, complex numbers have an imaginary element to them and that has to be accounted for." The would-be inventor's real job is managing a McDonalds, so I wonder if he has the math skills to even have had calculations.

I wasn't aware that complex numbers have an imaginary element (no wonder my perpetual motion machine stopped moving), and it is going to take me a couple of hours to use the Internet to figure out what a complex number is, and what an imaginary number is.

If Mr. Troutbend was here, he might be able to explain it to me, but sometimes in those situations he'll say something like 'it's intuitive' (in a nice way, never condescending) and I have never had any intuition when it comes to math, but I suppose one could hope.

You know how you hear of someone having a little stroke that doesn't give them an obvious impairment, but changes their personality a little bit? That might be the sort of event that would make it possible for me to wake up one morning mathematically intuitive.

Looking back on when I finally figured out to fix the furnace a couple of weeks ago (see post with Murphy's Law in the title), I suppose it was through inspiration or intuition triggered by utter desperation that I was able to figure out how to replace that defective part. Hold a gun to my head, and those imaginary numbers could become a reality.

It's not going to snow this much today. I like this picture with my footprints in it - it's our driveway looking toward the bridge to my house.