Now that the national weather service has started to name storms outside of the hurricane season, storm-naming is really out of control. It’s not enough that this weekend storm is called Nemo – which conjures up images of the sweet orange clown fish in the Disney-Pixar film from 2003 – but the media/weather folks have gone ahead and added Snowmageddon to the mix.

Right after my workout at the gym, I headed to the supermarket; NOT because I HAD to get bread and milk, but because I needed a few ingredients for a new recipe. I ended up stopping at three different stores to find the ingredients; that gave me a great overview of the people who were out at 9 this morning. There was the mom with her three year-old strapped in a stroller while she pushed the stroller and two weeks worth of groceries to her car; the elderly woman who was leisurely shopping for a bag of rice and a few apples; an elderly couple without a cart – walking back and forth across the front of the store trying to remember why they were there and what they were there to buy.

The interesting site was the deli counter. At BJ’s in Maple Shade it seemed there were just a few people wandering around the store shopping and back at the deli counter THERE were the people who absolutely positively needed a pound of honey ham, two pounds of American and a quarter pound of salami. You know you can’t get through Nemo without your over-salted, fatty lunch meat. OK, I am a sucker for my favorite comfort food lunch: grilled cheese and tomato soup. I go the healthier route: 2% American cheese on Arnold’s Thin Rounds with either Progresso Reduced Sodium Tomato Soup or any other low salt tomato. I suppose the families who needed that lunch meat will be happy they can enjoy their favorite sandwich in the next couple of days.

I will go out on a limb here (this just in) and say that the Philadelphia and South Jersey region will be spared the brunt of this storm. That won’t stop the media from crawling all over the little bit of snow that we’ll get in these parts. I just hope none of the local TV stations make the ridiculous move of sending a local reporter into the mess that will hit Boston and the rest of New England. (Please – I hope that does not happen.)

I saw a TV news report on CBS that included frantic people trying to travel via train or plane today. There was a mom who was trying to travel home with her three small children. She looked so unbelievably stressed because she was having no luck finding transportation home. I hope she finds a hotel room, orders a pizza, rents a Disney movie and has a ball with her kids. Sometimes it’s just not worth getting excited or stressed. You can’t change the weather and you sure can’t control it; ride out the storm; enjoy your family and friends as you stay close to home and we’ll see you on the other side.