an ill wind blows snow good

After trying for several hours, I am convinced there is nothing profound to say about the first major blizzard of the 21st century, and I should have stuck with what I had written before Old Man Winter struck, about Charlotte Bronte and her boring books.

When I began to write this, it was just past 2 a.m. Wednesday, and I was sitting at my desk in front of the computer. It is now nearing 10 a.m., and I'm still here. I was stranded at the office by a storm that dropped about 8 inches of snow in less than 24 hours.

All told, it hasn't been as bad as it sounds. The heat and the power worked all night, the phone and e-mail kept me in touch with the outside world, and my collection of cool toys -- including a three-eyed alien from "Toy Story 2," a talking "Batman Beyond" figurine and Cookie Monster -- have kept me occupied.

Old Man Winter and I have never gotten on especially well. We did reach a mutal understanding of a sorts for about two years: I moved to the tropics, and he never lowered the temperature below the 70s. When I returned to the United States, though, it was back to our old love-hate relationship.

When I was a child, there was a certain zing in the brisk winter air when the mercury dipped low, especially when there was snow. I loved to go tobogganing, and I shared with every other child the thrill of creating a snowman and waiting for it to burst into hideous life in a twisted version of "Frankenstein" meets "Winter Wonder Land."

But winter had a dark side too. It was wet, and that gave the cold temperatures a sinister gloss I never quite overcame. I still remember making a snow angel when I was 6 years old. The snow went down the back of my blue coat, where it became trapped and melted, leaving me shaking and shivering in the cold for however long it took me to risk my brothers' ridicule and go inside.

It's been about 23 years, and the world is still awaiting my second snow angel.

Then there were the snowball fights. Everyone loves snowball fights, it's true, and I suppose I've thrown my share of those missiles too. But with three brothers, it wasn't hard to discover that snowballs also could be unpleasant when they hit me.

In the political alliances of the four Learn boys, two parties usually surfaced: Herbert and Ward, and Brian and me. Free-for-all snowball fights were the exception. In these as with nothing else, I tried to assert a neutrality that would keep me safe from all harm, and billed myself as the "snow fort repairman."

I thought it was a good arrangement. I got to enjoy seeing all three of my brothers get pounded with snow balls at one point or another, while I stayed safe from aggression (so I thought) because, after all, you need a fort to protect yourself from the snowballs.

Herb's fort especially took a beating, not because the snowballs were made of ice -- although that was known to happen - but because he used to stand on top of it and sing "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner" and try to provoke Brian into hitting him.

The taunting invariably angered Brian -- we all were good at provoking him -- and he would step out from behind his protective wall, straight into one of Brian's piledrivers.

The combined toll of Brian's high-powered vengeance and Bill's own impromptu song-and-dance routines took their toll on his forts. They usually began the day as 4 feet high and ended as 2-foot walls of solid ice. I kept myself busy packing more and more snow on top of them, and screaming loudly whenever a snowball came too close.

As I recall, my neutral repairman strategy worked exactly once. The second time I tried it, I became the universally accepted target, and was sent screaming back inside, followed by a steady barrage of snowballs.

(Don't feel too bad for me. I eventually came out on top, since I landed a job at a newspaper that lets me make fun of them in print whenever I want.)

More than 20 years have passed since my job as a snow-fort repairman, and things have not changed much for me as far as the snow goes. I still enjoy the nip of the cold air, I still enjoy building snowmen and throwing snowballs, and I still hate being hit with them.

After sleeping at my desk Tuesday night - a novel experience in that I wasn't supposed to be working this time - I stepped outside to warm up the car and go find some breakfast. For the fourth time in two days, I retrieved my ice scraper and set to clearing the windows, keeping my hands well inside my sleeves.

One of the men who was clearing the parking lot of our office complex saw me scraping away and came to offer his assistance. Apparently, I still cut a pathetic figure in the snowy weather.