Caleb's getting a blizzard for his birthday!

Here's the forecast for Waltham:

Happy birthday . . . we think?  We hope somebody gave you a snow blower!  This forecast reminds me and Dad of January 1978,  when we were living with Claire at 40 Whitney Street in Hartford, Connecticut.  Actually, we were living here, only it was snowier then (look, Claire and Tom, it's still the same color!):

It snowed all evening and all night until Claire woke us up in the middle of the night to tell us that the roof of the Hartford Civic Center had collapsed under the weight of the snow, not long after it emptied out of people who'd been there for a UConn basketball game.

When the snow started the evening before, I was stranded at work at the Oak Hill School for the Blind.  I was expecting to have to stay there overnight, but Dad skied over from our house on Whitney Street with my skis on his back.  We skied back home through the wild blowing snow, past cars and buses stuck all kitty-corner and sideways in the drifts on Asylum Street, and then through the snowy paths of Elizabeth Park until we made it home.  The next day, we went skiing through the streets of downtown Hartford.  (All these years, I thought that all this happened in the Blizzard of 1978 -- but no -- I just looked it up, and the storm I'm describing was merely a forerunner.  The Civic Center collapsed in January 1978. The Blizzard of 1978 arrived a few weeks later, on Feb. 6-7 -- Laura's birthday-to-be!  In future, I suggest that all Murphies stay out of New England on their birthdays.)

Anyway, Caleb, we hope you have a happy birthday, historic though it may be.  This must come as quite a shock after a week in Florida.  We hope the power stays on long enough for somebody (Kate!) to make you a birthday cake.