-2 on my thermometer right now. A very, very cold pocket of air from the Arctic tundra is making its way into the United States, and it the Chicagoland area last night around midnight, with a 20 to 30 degree drop in temps, and a sustained wind of 30 m.p.h, gusting to 40, with wind chills going -25 below zero and colder. Definitely not the normal for this time of the year, of 33 degrees. The Jet Stream is in a southern pattern which has dipped down deep into the U.S., bringing a storm pattern that isn't letting up soon. It's been crazy. New Orleans got 4" of snow, Las Vegas got 3.5" of snow, the first time since 1979. And according to Chicago Tribune Meteorologists, it's going to be a wild and snowy Winter.

Recently I read that apparently one of my digital channels, NBC Weather Plus, will be going off the air January 1st, due to NBC Universal buying The Weather Channel and the fact that NBC Weather Plus (5.2 in Chicagoland) wasn't exactly creating profits. I noticed something was amuck when several weeks ago, all on-air Meteorologists completely stopped appearing and the channel became a series of maps and commercials. This also means the end of me seeing the hottest Meteorologist that I've ever seen, the lovely Texan: Britta Merwin. A petite little thing, hot and smart as hell, too. She also has this cute little lisp she does when says words like "nation". I'm sure she'll end up somewhere else (NBC W+ was in New Jersey) and I hope she ends up on the local Fox affiliate, and replace that incompetent Amy Freeze . Her first year here has been marred by constant stuttering, general douchery of mispronouncing the names of Illinois towns. Or Merwin could replace the ever-annoying ABC-7 Tracy Butler , who has an annoying tattle-telling school girl blipping rapid laugh, who you can tell when she was a kid, she was always screaming "I'M TELLING!!!"

On a personal level, on Sunday I met Tv.com member HelloStuart in a local sportscard shop. There was no knife fight . :P