Here Comes The Sun

January 30th, sunny 68 degrees, a light breeze, no bugs, no snow. I know it won't last, but I sure love intermittent Global Warming!

Nanuk of The North

This is my car after three days in Pennsylvania. Luckily we left D.C. before the storm of the century; not before I accidentally visited the Pentagon (I know where I'm going Carol). Since it snows a few inches every day, it never melts, it just turns to brown mush. Driving across West Virginia was fun with trucks spraying us with slush and gravel. I think the windshield survived with just a little pitting. When we reached Virginia the sun came out and by the time we got home it was sunny and 45 degrees (notice reflection of sun in the window). Tomorrow is supposed to be 50 degrees and sunny so I'll try to wash all traces salt and grit off the Element.

When I got home I discovered Marianne left her crayons in our back seat. Some things never change. I must get theses back to her before her next class.





This sign is in the window of a
Bojangles Fried Chicken Restaurant in
Bristol Tenn. I asked the manager if she had an extra one for my dog's room. Too bad, she didn't so I took a picture of it. Speaking of Bo after we picked him up he went psycho for about five minutes then collapsed on Ben's bed.

I forgot just how much fun a 1,500 mile road trip can be, especially in a Honda Element.

School Buses Do Run On Icy Roads

We just escaped D.C. before the ice storm of the century. I forgot the joy of the Pa. Turnpike. It's like a New York parkway with a 70 mph speed limit that allows trucks. We crossed over into Pa. at Hancock Md. and immediately it got dark and gray and the road got bumpy. About two miles into Pa. route 70 came to a dead stop. We sat for an hour and a half as every volunteer firetruck from every borough in western Pa. joined the festivities. It wasn't even a good accident, just a moving van that caught fire and they had to empty the home furnishings into another truck and then have a firefighter/paramedic pot-luck. I think somebody packed up the snowblower, judging by the hole in the size of the trailer.

I thought I was awake at 5 am but then I remembered that in western Pa. the sky doesn't go from black to battleship gray until 8. I then heard a snow plow go by and scrap off the inch of snow that fell last night. Then I saw a school bus, and I realized I've been deceived. School Buses do run on icy roads and an inch of snow doesn't cancel school for a week everywhere.

Friggin Cold in D.C.

Washington D.C. is not used to temperatures in the low teens and wind chills below zero. Usually you think of highs in the nineties with 90% humidity. We went out to Georgetown for lunch yesterday. Usually this would be a nice two mile walk across the Potomac from Ben's penthouse. After walking a half mile in the bluster we got on a bus for the remainder of the trip. You know it's cold when the CB will pay a dollar for a twelve block bus ride.


So we are moving along in the bus and are about four blocks from the destination when we stop for a group of fifteen frozen co-eds in search of the Metro. It was more of a Coast Guard rescue of hypothermia victims coming from Georgetown Cupcakes. It took each girl about a minute to get her frozen fingers to grasp the dollar fare and put it in the box. Finally inside the warmth of the bus off comes the scarves, ear muffs and mittens . The frost gradually melts off their eyelashes and the color returns to their faces as they settle in for a half mile ride to the Metro station. So much for Al Gore and his Global Warming, the Northeast is freezing its ass off.

Bo The Wonder Dog

Bo Has Allergies

Bo has allergies. They could be due to food, they could be due to pollen, dust, grass, laminate flooring, who the heck knows what makes him scratch and chew little patches of fur in an attempt to look like a checkerboard. So far I have treated him with antihistamines, cortisone cream and sprays to make his fur taste like vinaigrette dressing. The Benadryl makes him resemble a Welcome-Mat and he just licks off the Bitter-Apple and cortisone.

My neighbor and his groomer thinks he needs special hypoallergenic dog food. This stuff costs about as much as flank steak. It has neat names like Origen, Pinnacle, Canedae and Avoderm. The ingredients read like a menu in a French Restaurant: rabbit, sweet potatoes, duck, trout, halibut, endives and pheasant.

My specialty dog food has always been what's featured at my favorite pet specialty store; Old-Roy from Wal-Mart. Occasionally I would get some other top seller that was on sale at Ag-Way. Simba had some digestive problems that would result in her vomiting up a crepe every other day. She would do this in our mud-room bathroom where it would cook unattended for about twelve hours till it looked like the third ingredient in Denny's "Grand Slam Breakfast." I tried a bag of the expensive dog food on her which only resulted the the same amount of crepes along with a hundred times more flatulence. It was so bad that if I was asleep on the couch and Simba was in her favorite spot right in front of me, one of her farts would wake me up. I don't mean the noise, I mean a smell that would put a three pack a day smoker into laryngospasm.

Now I know Simba was just a neurotic Rottweiler and Bo is an ancient noble breed from Wales. I feed the little prince Purina-One. To me that's a big step, it's the best Wal-Mart has to offer. I find comfort in that he only weighs 22 lbs. So now I am supposed to give him a three month try on some hypoallergenic port a faire that costs about a hundred dollars for a thirty pound bag. It would be cheaper to fry him a New York strip steak every night from Sam's Club. I can buy a popcorn sized bag of Benadryl for a hundred bucks. Even a quarterly I.M. shot of Kenalog (steroid) would only cost thirty dollars.

Well I'll try one bag of the hypoallergenic crap I can find at PetsMart. If that doesn't work he can turn into one big scab and carry a sign that says UNCLEAN. First, however, he has to finish up seventeen more pounds of Purina-One. After all, the odds of us discovering that one little allergen that makes him itch are about a hundred to one.

In Light Of The Arizona Shootings

In an attempt to improve the civil discourse in this country I aim going to do my part by aiming to:

Put down the toilet seat after using the potty

Return my shopping carts to the rack at Wal-Mart

Make a full stop before making a right on red

Not drink out of the open milk container


After all this wasn't just a random act of violence by a deranged psychopath, it was a statement of who we are as a people.

Snow-weenieism

Let's see. It snowed eight inches Sunday night and school is closed till the following Tuesday. No church last Sunday morning because it's supposed to start snowing at eleven PM that evening. The weather people, that bunch of morons. feel the need to remind us every ten minutes: "no school buses running on icy roads." They should add to that list, snow plows, police cars , ambulances, and tow trucks. You can't get a tow truck to get you out of a ditch if the snow on your street is more than six inches deep.

So far this year the schools have been closed twenty days for wind, rain, cold, threat of rain, threat of cold and threat of snow anywhere east of the Mississippi River. Do you wonder why India and China are kicking our butts? Those people will pedal a bicycle up a mountain in a monsoon to get to their three dollar a day job. It just shows how helpless we have become. I actually think driving in the snow is fun; except for watching out for the dummies who don't know how.

I heard on the radio that the local businesses do well in the snow. It seems that all the snow-weenies who can't get to work or school find some way to make it to the mall. All it takes is eight inches of blowing snow to force us all into our caves like a bunch of neanderthals. Instead of sitting around the fire or drawing cave paintings we sit in front of the TV or immersed in some 4G network describing our last bowel movement. Eventually the cave-man has to go out in the snow and throw sticks at a Woolly Mammoth. They probably perished because some cave-man bureaucrat wrote on the cave wall "No Cave-Men On Icy Roads".

Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut

We all have run into people like this. Just look at those eyes. Those are the eyes of an insane person. I even went to college with a few.

When I was in college in Idaho there was a crazy in the school. I heard his family was rich and they sort of just warehoused him there until they could retire to Costa Rico. Now Fred was in the school of technology. I suppose they thought he could blend with slide-rule geeks easier than with the football players or Iranians. I heard Fred had been at the four year college for six years and I was told it would be three more years before he would be ready to graduate because he was determined to take every class in the school of technology. Now where I grew up having odd people around me was nothing new. So I would nod and smile at Fred in the dormitory elevator and otherwise give him a wide berth. I had one of the girls from upstairs tell me it was a real treat to find oneself alone on the elevator with Fred at 1 am when they went down to the lobby to grab a TAB while in their pajamas.

On the nut scale I thought Fred was pretty benign. Then I went down to the dorm cafeteria right before they closed for breakfast one Sunday morning. I had a hangover and the choice of the runny scrambled eggs or waiting till 6 pm for supper was a tough one. So I decided to try the eggs, when Fred sat beside me. It was going well until Fred starts stabbing his forearm with the butter knife. By now the eggs are looking a lot worse. OK breakfast is over I'll just bring my tray to the window and go back to bed and forget this whole morning. On the way back to the elevator I stopped by the head R.A.'s apartment and told him he needed to check on Fred.

The point I'm trying to make is How Crazy Does One Have To Be, To Be Thrown Out Of Community College? Jared Lougher was a such a nut that his classmates cherished the desk closest to the exit so they would stand a chance of escaping when he started shooting. The community college, however, with their TSA mentality just wanted to move the problem down the line. Thirty years ago the Dean would have called the police, who would call a Psychaitrist who knew a Judge who would get this guy in a locked ward. Not today in the USA of TSA. The fear of litigation along with the generalized stupidy of public education have left us vulnerable to all breeds of crackpots.

So if the paranoid schizophrenics are no longer at the county farm the rest of us have to be vigilant. We also have to endure monthly atrocities and even worse, the solid month of media commiseration and fault finding. My advice is to avoid large crowds, carry your own protection and be aware of those around you. Look in their eyes; you can always see it in thier eyes.

Chickens a Comin' Home to Roost

I gassed up my fathers Oldsmobile and it cost $45. Gas is 75 cents more a gallon than when the evil George W. Bush was President. That comes to $10 more per tank. The state of NC also raises the gas tax along with increase in price, it's now 35 cents a gallon. So now when I fill up I just have to hand the Governor a fin for the privilege of living in NC. I'm glad food and gasoline don't go into the consumer price index. What can you expect from a President who stops all off shore drilling? Oh I forgot, he loves us; like O.J. loved Nicole. Now,I will survive if gas goes to $5/gallon, but what about the poor schmo with a family who's taking home a thousand dollars a month and now has to pay an extra thirty dollars a month for gas? Besides, when gas gets up to $4/gallon it will effect the Blue-Book value of my my 93 Oldsmobile. A full tank of gas can double its value.