Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Snowbound and down

Sigh.

First off, let me say Happy New Year! For that matter, Merry Christmas and Chappy Chanukah. (You like that last one? Yea me too.)  Anyway, sorry I didn't write a blog for December, I was going to put in my 2 cents about the local controversy about how the Philadelphia Free Thought Society (Atheist) didn't get to put up their "Tree of Knowledge" decorated with ornaments that are the covers of books written by famous non-believers.  I was going to juxtapose this with the fact that a few blocks down the street a homeowner who really goes all out for Christmas with the inflatable lawn decorations had some of them stolen right off his lawn so he pulled all his decorations inside in protest.  I was going to cleverly tie together with some wit and insight on freedom of expression, religious freedom, and commercialism, then I realized I'd get in over my head and decided to drop the whole thing because in the end I would have probably arrived at a depressing conclusion.

 Speaking of depressing, what's the deal with all this snow?  Again I've mentioned it before, despite my Florida nativity, and my Cuban ethnicity, I know snow.  In fact, here are some pictures of me in the snow from when I was in the Army.

Ok here technically I'm not in the snow, but I'm taking this picture hiding in my room in the barracks instead of going to PT in the snow, so I still count it. Ft Devens, 1986

Here I am in Chitose, Saporro, Japan, January 1989. Coldest place I've ever been.


They had us staying in WWII barracks instead of the Marriott this one time, can you believe it? 
Fort Sheridan, Illinois 1993


I think if you looked back at all my blogs over the last 3 years, you'd think I live in some Arctic frontier town or something.  Today of course is no exception, we've gotten snow overnight, with more snow coming this afternoon.  I tell you, it's bad enough with the snow and never seeing the sun during the day, but with the early darkness of daylight savings time, I'm inclined to lend a lot of credence to that whole "Seasonal Affective Disorder" thing aka "S.A.D.", can you believe it?


Well despite it all, one has to make the best of things, like today, when I had to go get Lana's car from where it was parked, (why is she parked outside, blocks away from our apartment, instead of in the warm comfort of the newly built parking garage you ask? Because if you are not out of the garage by 7:30 AM, they close the gates and start charging you to leave, 75 cents every half hour.  If she starts work at 3:00 PM, well, you can imagine it'll start to add up, so we play this game every other day of finding a place to park near Marshall Park) and of course when I got there the car had been covered with up to 6 inches of snow.

Trying to make light of things, I gave her car a Mohawk, (Snowhawk?) 


 Finally, coming back in from the cold, this is what my scooter looked like.
Well, what can I say, we're all hanging in there to one varying degree or another, it's very hard because it's very easy that in addition to the environmental factors, we allow that mental parasite known as the internet to get it's clutches on our brainstem, and we spend these dark evenings reading article after article about how everything is so terrible in these United States, whether it's about the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the rise of China, or ironically, the weather, for that matter.  Oh and let me tell you, it's really hard, but a bit of advice from me to you would be to avoid reading the comments on certain articles, the things people spout off these days because of the anonymity, I tell ya, sheesh!

Please though, don't be shy, feel free to leave a comment!  A special note to my readers from around the world, tell us how you are feeling?  Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, India, UK, I see you there landing on my blog, check in won't you? Does anybody else on the planet have a sense of brightness of future right around the corner, or is everyone feeling the same kind of ennui that we are here?

Maybe instead of hiding under blankets, I need to get out there and make the best of it.  I may end up in Arizona one day and then I'll be missing the snow.....then again, maybe not.  Oh the heck with it, I think I'll go build a snowman.
Snowmageddon, West Chester PA 2010


See you soon!


Oh by the way, anybody else think the title of today's blog entry is even remotely clever?  I do....just saying...





















4 comments:

Mikey said...

Hey Jerry Reed, I thought you title was remotely clever.

That’s one.

Frankly I would have enjoyed reading about the atheist group and their “tree of knowledge.” As much of a fan as I am of free inquiry, the new atheist set seems more religious than your average Episcopal parishioner; and therefore deserves a good mocking.

If you are feeling rather blah this wintertime, it might have more to do with reading every dreary article about how rotten things are. Darn internet! I too have wasted precious time reading similar articles predicting our downfall that I wouldn’t have bothered with if I was waiting in the dentist office and my ipod was broken.

But that’s because it’s winter. Things may turn around by spring.

Dr Zibbs said...

I was wondering where the tree of knowledge went!

Laz said...

You left of the Norse Yule references.

Still less snow than last year, but we have February in front of us.

Feed the blog. Feed the cloud.

Kristen said...

You are my main source for behind-the-scenes local news. I did not know about the tree of knowledge or the theft of inflatable lawn decorations.

Agree, that this winter feels especially tough with all the weather challenges (parking, driving, walking, etc) and spring feeling so far off. But it will be here soon, and you know it will feel GREAT! So there's some optimism. It's not much, but I don't even have one of those light therapy boxes.