Apparently, it's still winter.

The 40-degree days off ... Wednesday ... are long-gone. The rain that ... 24 hours ago ... fell with the promise of washing away more of the snow still piled high on front lawns and around cars parked along the streets is a mere memory.

I swear Al-Qaida is behind this somehow.

Just when it appeared March might bring with it a slow, gradual rise in temperature, a change in the cold, gray, snowy days of winter, Mother Nature breaks out the ruler again and calls each of us individually to the front of the classroom for another good slap on the hands. "Put that baseball glove back in the closet, young man!"

At first this morning it was merely the pitter-patter of a hard rain, but it soon became the chink of tiny, frozen droplets on the windows. When Casey announced at 8:30 she had to leave and Cranky Old Man had not moved his car so I had to move mine, we stepped off the porch onto a sidewalk covered in a thin and somewhat maleable coating of crusted slush (we left footprints). Our cars were encased in a thin but not debilitating exoskeleton and the driveway � a slight decline from the top down past Casey's car � was becoming slick.

We decided we'd carpool and Casey was content to arrive at work nearly an hour later than she had planned. I had yet to shower, so I went back inside to do just that while she offered to begin removing my car from its cocoon. Once I'd bathed and dressed it had turned to snow and the roads were already white. At least ours, the side roads, were. The main roads were brown � that slushy mixture of snow, ice, salt and sand that splashes up from the speeding SUVs and sticks to the body of the car behind each wheel.

We made it to work without incident, traveling the four miles in 30 or 40 minutes, spending much of the time sitting in stop-and-go traffic along once stretch of the route. That was fine, actually, because it meant no one was speeding. I had to deal with windshield wipers that didn't touch the windshield in some spots, leaving a swath of ice that turned my view into what you see when looking at someone in the shower through frosted glass.

As ready as I am for spring � baseball, baseball, baseball! � I've managed to take this neverending winter in stride by reminding myself how hot, dry and drought-ridden last summer was. All restrictions in New York and New Jersey have been completely lifted, reservoirs are at necessary levels and rivers are flowing abundantly. There should be no need for alternate-day watering schedules and no bans on at-home car washing. This winter has provided plenty of snow, and if we can have one day a week of good rain this spring, we should be set through September.

If only we'd had one day of snow on a weekend, or maybe Christmas eve, so that we had a day without work to enjoy the weather, to take a walk in the quiet whiteness, to take our time with the shoveling and do it right and do it safely. Instead, we've awakened to covered roadways and headaches during rush hour, or watched from the office windows as the snow's accumulated and made the ride home treacherous.

But I suppose I shouldn't complain � we were in Florida for the worst snowfall of the season.

That's twice today I've accidentally thrown something into the wastebasket under my desk. First it was the top to my water bottle, which slipped from my hand and richocheted into the bucket; just now it was the box of Eclipse gum that I pulled from the second drawer down, hit on the edge of the drawer, disloging it from my hand and sending it spinning off my knee into the trash.

I don't check my "refers" stats every day, and some days it seems like there are no Googles worth mentioning. Interest in Duff Man and "You're the man now, dog!" has certainly dropped off (in the past 24 hours, I've had one hit for the former, none for the latter). But what I did have since this time yesterday is both amusing and disturbing...

"Julie Bowen New York." I am reminded, though, that Ed soon moves from Wednesday to Friday (when it premiered it aired on Sundays), and though I hear the producers welcome the move (hey, if Providence can last as long as it did on Fridays, just about anything has a chance), it's not usually a good sign when a show loses its weeknight time slot for a Friday or Saturday one.

"Mister Rogers cocaine use." C'mon now, that's just not right. I don't even think Eddie Murphy went this far with his "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood" parodies.

"R. Kelly online watch tape." OK, that phrase doesn't even make sense, and it led to an entry in which I mentioned I "began to watch the tape" of an American Idol episode that included both R.J. and Kelly. Not quite the same.

"Crappy kids drawings.<"/b> This continues to bring a lot of people here, maybe because I link to it.

"Jonathan Taylor Thomas shirtless." Ah, the teen scene returns.

"Kansas scenery." About as picturesque as this diary. No, actually, when I drove across it five years ago, there were some pretty fields filled with sunflowers.

"Worst hair of spring training." Well, seeing how all the ballplayers have hat head ...

"Nude XX year old only." I don't want to promote it, so I'm not even mentioning the words that are the opposite of overage non-porn. The XX refers to an age when many states allow teens to drive and girls have a lot of parties that are "sweet."

Some day it will get warmer and I'm going to have more interesting things to say besides making remarks about weird or disturbing phrases that led to this site.