It's Spring!

Really - it is spring! My local Dairy Queen and the local A&W drive-in both opened today.

Yes, the ice rink is still up in the park and Mill Creek is frozen over.

Picture at left from Deansfa on wikicommons. Lovely snap and thanks for the use!

I get the medium chocolate shake with burger and rings; but, horses for courses.

Friday morning saw twenty below temperatures. Today's high crested twenty above and that felt balmy. There's a line at the Dairy Queen. It's a walk-up. Yes, people in parkas are waiting on their ice cream.

I don't think any of the parkas are zipped, though.

I wore my "light" parka today. I only wear the heavy expedition gear when it is actually cold outside. I also drive a rear-wheel-drive sports car all winter. I put snow tires on it. German engineering plus one hundred sixty pounds of softener salt in the trunk. Drives like there's a hundred sixty pounds in the trunk, too.

So, the worm has turned.

Cristina James wrote this week about working in her garden. My garden is under two feet of ice.

We had an exchange over how the cold has influenced crime in my area. If you were going to do any domestic killing this winter, you had to dig the rose garden last fall. The frost is too deep here to do any effective body disposal at the moment.

Yes, we do open graves and conduct funerals. Backhoes are wonderful pieces of equipment; but, it isn't equipment found next to the power mower.

I love winter crime. I love the spring and the bodies coming to light. The river thaws and the fishermen go out to find the winter kill. The snow pile melts and the bodies come out.

It's a great time for the mind of crime.

From the great "Country Death Song" by the Violent Femmes:

I started making plans to kill my own kind.

Or, for you Tom Waits fans, from "Murder in the Red Barn"

There's always some killin' you got to do around the farm.

That's it. There's a lot more to Tom than just an emotional weather report or Frank's Wild Years.

I'm thinking hard these days on Nick and Nora and think Mr. Hammett was onto something with this pair. Hardly surprising given his lovely works.

I keep thinking of Nick and Nora with the other shoe.

I think of Nora in the lead and the pair as amusing criminals instead of detectives. I'd definitely reverse the roles. Glamour? Sure. Nora would have all the connections as Nick does in the movies. She'd be the one in the native land of criminals. Nick would be the younger of the pair rising to the occasion when required but clearly following - mostly - Nora's lead.

I know it is horrible to disclose that I'm thinking of such a ham-fisted theft from the great Hammett.
His characters are great!

I'm of two minds about it in the end and I'm sure I'd do enough twisting and turning to make the stories my own. I'm not suggesting a vaguely disguised theft of story and plot.

I just think Hammett really had something in the chemistry of the pair and I've admired that sort of thing for years.

I like the idea of Nora being the lead. There is just something about a girl with a .380 wearing chiffon in the study standing over a corpse newly made.

I think I can do better on the pair's dialogue, as well. I enjoy the understood subject and letting the reader in on the unsaid that the characters dance about without declaring. Not everyone's cup of tea.

So, spring. I've new ideas. I've work to do but I have new ideas.

I also had a small burger, onion rings, and a chocolate shake for dinner.

Now I have a foxhound who won't leave me alone.

Maybe we'll go for a walk and see what is under the ice.