Blizzard 2011 or: DUH! You Live In The Midwest!

It can’t be stopped. It will destroy everything in it’s path. It will mark the second coming. It will show that the Mayans were off by one year. It is THE GREAT BLIZZARD OF 2011!

It’s snow people. It has snowed before. It will snow again. It is something you expect when you live in the Midwest. If you don’t like earthquakes, you don’t move to California. If you don’t like hurricanes, you don’t move to the gulf coast. If you don’t like snow, you don’t move to where there is snow. Plain and simple.

I will give in to the fact that this is a major snow storm. The biggest in ten years and one of the biggest, potentially, of all time since records have been kept. The problem I have is the gloom and doom of everyone in regards to this storm. This is not like a hurricane that will last for 3 days, flood the streets and make everyone run out of food. You will be snowed in for like a day at most people. You are NOT going to run out of food to the extent that you have to descend on every grocery and convenience store and decimate their stock. Do you people ONLY go grocery shopping when there is a natural disaster? Is the problem that you have to buy

groceries because you won’t be able to get out to your favorite restaurant? Are you all too stuck up to eat that can of tuna or tomato soup that you were saving for the food drive?

The predictions are the world is ending. The weather service is telling people to stay home. Schools and businesses will be closing. The entire populations of Illinois, Wisconsin and a good part of Missouri are going to be snowed in going nowhere. So why did gas jump 20-30 cents overnight? Who is buying all this gas if no one is going anywhere? People are renting hotel rooms in the city so they can go to work the next day. They are not driving. There should be a law that in this type of “weather emergency” prices should be frozen and affordable for those that actually WILL need them. If a relative s in a

And I thought they smelled bad on the outside

horrific car crash, you will get gouged to go visit them in the hospital. If you have a heart attack shoveling snow, you will get gouged getting a ride to the ER.

It is no surprise that we have snow here. Not even a surprise that a blizzard comes

around once in a while. Deal with it people. Use your heads. Have some common sense. The reason everything gets screwed up during these storms is because of stoopid people doing stoopid things.  Not sure where I was going with this anymore.

I will be doing the January celebrity death list tomorrow while I am at home. I wanted to wait to make sure that I don’t have a heart attack while clearing snow. Need to make sure that I survive the storm because I am just not all that into irony.

Anyhoo, until next time, remember … “Your Tauntaun’ll freeze before you reach the first marker.”

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I WON! I WON! I WON!

Is what you might have heard if I lived in Washington or Idaho, or if I had ever bothered to watch Lost and remembered the lottery numbers and then played them. Alas, I have never seen Lost, I live in Illinois and I am still subjecting you to my writing.

I think today I am going to make this post one of the annoying baby updates that I promised months ago and have slacked on. Tori is officially 3 months old today. Everything is going great! I am loving every minute of being a daddy. Sure, there are still moments of no sleep, little sleep and every variation in between. There is crying, smiling, spitting up and being fussy but most days I behave pretty well. I know I should have some updated pictures of Tori to add to this post but I need to unload the camera. I promise to do that when I get home tonight so if you want to see updated pics, come back around 9 p.m. C.S.T. and there will be pictures added to the Flickr feed.

I should “Side Note” this but I am just feeling lazy today. Some may have noticed that I did NOT come up with a list of resolutions this year. I don’t think I kept any of them very well so I am not going to set myself up for disappointment, ridicule and potential bankruptcy for posting new ones this year.

There is an interesting thing that WordPress is doing this year where you sign up for blogging every day, or every week and they give you inspiration or some crazy stuff like that. I am not sure exactly how it works because I did not sign up for it. I didn’t even read all of the particulars because I know there is no way in hell that I will be able to post every day. I failed at 3 times a week! I wonder if it would help my chances to be a “featured blog” if I posted every day. Probably not. Good God I am starting to sound like Andy Rooney. Did you ever notice that when people whine a lot, they ALL sound like Andy Rooney?

Don’t think I have forgotten about the few challenges I got last year of various ways to write my blog. There were a few good ones that I am still going to attempt. I did say when I made the challenge that it may take me a while. I blame the new baby.

Well, this was kind of a meandering mess today but at least it was something. I think I might have to start doing top 10 lists again or something. Not sure if I am going to continue with Techtainment Tuesday even though we are right up against the CES. Maybe I will do a recipe day. I can come up with some recipe and someone can make it and let me know if it is any good? Anyone daring enough to go for that?

Well, that is it for today. Gotta go pluck my ear hair and trim my eyebrows. Until next time, remember … “Vegetarian – that’s an old Indian word meaning lousy hunter.”

But I Can’t Email While Driving?

The simple answer to this is “It’s illegal in Illinois.” Other than it being against the law, there are many other reasons why I personally can’t email, text or do anything else that requires massive coordination while driving.  One of them is I am just clumsy. I never have been able to text with one thumb. I can barely email with 2 thumbs on a landscape keyboard no matter if it is virtual or otherwise. If I were to attempt this while driving, or even trying to rush out a quickie during a stop light, it would come out a mash of letters and symbols that would look as if  a toddler had gotten a hold of my phone. I accept the fact that I can’t type and drive. I welcome the excuse that the new law has given me. Now, I can say “Sorry, couldn’t answer, I was driving.” If people need to get a hold of me they can call or get no response until I have arrived at my destination. I have gotten to the point that I don’t even like talking on my phone unless I am using my blue tooth. Mind you, none of this is done out of safety, it is done because I am a klutz.

I have no problem with the law of no texting or emailing while driving. Obviously I am quite fine with voluntarily adhering to this ban. I don’t even flaunt the law because, as the walking embodiment of Murphy’s Law, I WILL be the one who gets a ticket. Because of this, imaging how angry I got when the following happened. <insert wavy lines ala Wayne’s World>

Driving along Rt. 72 on my way to work. Coming up to Rt. 25 intersection. Sitting at the stop light with 3 cars in front of me. In the lane to my right, 2 cars before the light and then a cop car pulls up even with the car in front of me. My BlackBerry goes off indication a work email. I look at the phone, then the cop, the phone, the cop. Will he see if I sneak a peek? Will I get a ticket? I decide to not check the email, hoping it is nothing important. After all I don’t want to break the law. I take a sip of my beverage and then look at the car in front of me. I am a little astounded by what I see. The driver is reading the newspaper, next to a cop. I am thinking I am finally going to see some justice. This guy is flipping through sections, pulling them out, tossing them aside, blatantly holding the paper up in front of his face. I look at the cop. Nothing. Not even a scolding warning look.

The light finally turns green. I am thinking it is over with and the paper will go down. NO! This guy keeps reading the paper as we are driving down the road. AND THE COP IS STILL NEXT TO HIM! It isn’t like this guy is hiding it. He is holding the paper up in front of his face, at times totally blocking his view of the road. The cop STILL does nothing. I couldn’t pass this moron because of the cop either. Not that I think I would have wanted him behind me. At least this way he wouldn’t rear end me. This went on for about 4 miles until he turned off at another intersection. The cop … kept going.

Before I get excuses on why the cop didn’t pull him over … he was in uniform, it WAS his jurisdiction, and it was NOT a normal shift change time. Although he HAD just turned onto the road from the Dunkin’ Donuts so maybe he was just food tired. I just can’t believe that blocking your vision is legal and I can’t look to see if the text message I just got was from a relative on their way to the hospital for some reason, from my neighbors saying my house is burning to the ground or an email saying I just won 5 million dollars in the Uzbekistan national lottery. Grrr.

Speaking of reading … We just went to the Dr. to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Since we were seeing the midwife and not the Dr. and not having a major procedure done we had to wait … and wait … and wait. In the few visits that we have had so far we haven’t had to wait that long and I only had enough time to notice that most of the paintings in the office are by Georgia O’Keefe. This time I had the chance to check out the magazines in the room. The staples of Soap Opera Digest and People were there but, do people actually ever read Architectural Digest, Money and I never even heard of Dwell. Jackie says that they pick those because they are the cheapest ones on the list when kids come by to sell magazine subscriptions. Oh well. I guess I am just not classy enough to want to digest architecture.

Until next time, while your driving remember … “it’s not the speed really so much, I just wish I hadn’t drunk all that cough syrup this morning.”