The beauty of driving in the snow

I wake up this morning to the drone of the guy on the radio announcing that everywhere but where I work is closed today because of the threat of snow. In Baltimore, it doesn't take much snow to get us worked up. They are predicting 4-8" today, and though there was no snow on the ground when I got up, virtually all of the school systems were closing. It may sound ridiculous on the surface, especially to anyone living north of the Mason-Dixon line. But if you think about it when you are pretty certain that you'll have to close school early at best which is an enormous headache for bus drivers, teachers, administrators and parents, it makes more sense just to stay closed.

Anyway, I got myself together eventually (It's always hard to get motivated to go to work when Mrs. Dave is resting peacefully in bed still. The urge to stay in/get back in bed with her and snuggle up is very strong, but I managed to resist it. So, I get on the road and it has just started snowing. The flakes aren't too big, but at least it's not sleet. When I get on the highway, I found myself almost mesmerized by the way the snow was blowing around the road. Just beautiful swirling wisps of white dancing just above the surface of the road. I guess it was just a moment of unexpected beauty in an otherwise ugly setting. I've seen them before, but something about them today really made them outstanding.

Luckily for me the drive in was easy and incident free. But I love driving in the snow except when traffic is really bad. When I was in college, I used to take my '82 Buick Century to the local Pizza Hut parking lot and just spin out and slide all over the place for fun when it snowed. Cool thing was, it taught me how to handle the car in those situations. I guess by knowing what to do to get the car to spin or slide, I learned not to do that when there is an emergency. And if you can get an '82 Buick out of a slide or spin, you can get anything out of a slide or spin.

Dave

Dave

Has my heart stopped beating?

Aaaack! The How Forum is down! Whatever shall I do? Like the ant in a Bug's Life when a leaf falls in his path..."I'M LOST!!!!"

I mean, what am I supposed to do? Work????

So of course, next time

I click on the next blog button, I find this: World Forum. There are some great photographs there. I don't know much about all the politics involved and such, but the photography is outstanding, and I can appreciate that, if nothing else.

Dave

Can you?

This is odd. See the search window at the top of this page? Do you get any results when you search for something there? So far, I haven't gotten one. At first I thought maybe it was because it was only searching this blog. So I copied some text, plugged it in there, but nothin' came up. I put in "water"; sorry, cannot find any information about water in Google! Whoa!

On a similar note, have you ever clicked the "next blog" button at the top right of the page? I've tried it maybe 30 times and I've seen one, maybe two coherent sites in English. I'll assume another was coherent French, but I can't be sure. The rest have been virtually incomprehensible.

I know I'm not the only sane one here, but I'm wondering how many of us are left!

Dave

Correction: I can't breathe

Bah! Stupid head cold! Been honkin' like a gander for a couple of days now. It's amazing how much you take breathing for granted til it becomes difficult. I feel almost euphoric in those few moments where things are actually clear and I can get enough air.

While not on the same scale, I'm reminded of Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air. In the beginning he talks about being on top of Mt. Everest. He had been to the top and was on his way down. His group's oxygen supplies were running low. Virtually everyone was suffering from some sort of delusional thinking (elevation sickness) because of the reduced oxygen supply. One of the first symptoms is losing the ability to think clearly and logically.

He and some other hikers were trying to figure out how much oxygen they actually had. Things got confusing and someone opened Krakauer's oxygen tank all the way. Suddenly he could think clearly and he felt good, reinvigorated. That's kind of how I feel when I can breathe for a minute. Of course, in Krakauer's book, he feels good just long enough to realize that he's running out of oxygen quickly and is seriously f****d! You'll have to read it to see how it worked out. All I'll say is that if you don't believe in miracles, you will after you read that, despite the tragedy surrounding it.

Dave

I can breathe again

Went to the pulmonologist today, and you'll be glad to know that I am still breathing. I'm still trying to figure out why it took an hour-and-a-half to find that out, but I digress...;)

Have things gotten so bad in our healthcare system that he had to give me the following prescription, just to cover his butt?

1. Inhale
2. Exhale
3. Repeat as needed.

Sad thing is he probably had to because someone somewhere stopped breathing!

hehehehe

Dave

For those interested

Flickr has changed how it operates somewhat, so the photos of my son and niece in the Christmas post are now bigger. There's nothing new except for the size.

Here's the linky link.

I also found that Photobucket seems to be a pretty good place to host your photos for blog and forum type stuff.

Enjoy!

Dave

Making Tracks

No, it's not another train post! I was in the shower this morning while Mrs. Dave was doing her hair. Since all the steam makes her hair go flat if I open up the curtain when I'm done, she hands me the towel over the top of the curtain. While I had my arm up waiting for the towel, the light happened to be just right so I could see almost all of the needle prick tracks from when I was in the hospital/getting blood drawn while I was sick, mainly the former. There must have been a dozen or more, and that was in my left arm. They drew most of the blood from the right arm. You can't really see it any other way unless you look very carefully. It was just an odd reminder of all I went through last summer.

 

The reason that is significant is because when I went to the emergency room that last time and they said I had the blood clot I really thought there was a chance the lights could go out at any time. I didn't know where that one (clot) came from so heck, another could be along any minute. As it turns out, I probably wasn't actually in danger of dying, but the feeling that the emotions of thinking it could actually happen stay with me. I'm glad things have worked out the way they have, but every once in a while I get that little reminder, like the needle pricks, of how I felt and it is powerful and stressful. Just a reminder that it can all go to hell at any moment. I wonder how people who actually narrowly escaped passing away handle things, because this is hard enough in my opinion.

 

Even before I got sick, for whatever reason, I frequently thought about what things would be like if I was gone. Not suicidal thoughts, mind you, I'm in no rush to the exit of this world, just what things would be like for my family, etc. Would anyone else even notice? Or what if I lost Mrs. Dave? No, I've never contemplated bumping her off at all, but what if what happened to her sister (who died suddenly of cancer, if you don't know) happened to her?

 

The thought of 'would anyone else even notice?' came during Mrs. Dave's sister's funeral. We were the third car or so in the procession. We reached the top of a large hill, and I looked in the rearview mirror and there were headlights as far as I could see behind us. I wondered if she would have had any idea that that many people knew and cared enough about her to come. We thought she probably wouldn't have.

 

Well, if you are still reading this, I can't imagine why, but thanks. I guess writing it all out was kind of therapeutic. Take care of yourself...

Dave

Champion-chip

Anyone ever notice that almost no one says championship correctly anymore? It's always champion-chip. I heard this a lot in the buildup for the Super Bowl. Just weird how that has evolved.

Anyway, my plan was to enlighten my readers on my great advertising expertise by reviewing the Super Bowl Ads, but the boy went partially crazy, and for as much as he talked about watching the Super Bowl all day, he really didn't watch much. I had bath-giving duty at halftime, so I missed some of the commercials around then. I know that this site has all of them, but I don't feel like doing it now.

Maybe it was because I was largely distracted from the game itself, but I thought it wasn't a very exciting game, despite the final score. I was with Troy Aikman when he talked about how much time the Eagles were wasting near the end of the game. How did they get to the Super Bowl with that kind of clock management?? You have to respect Terrell Owens though. Through everything with his ankle, he went out and played hard. Say what you will about all the other stuff he has done, he grinded out a decent performance considering the injury.

Well, here's to the Ravens making it to the Super Bowl next year!

Dave

Do you think it could happen?

Do you think that we shall ever see the day where a man, especially a white man, plays a guy with above-average intelligence (outside of work) in a TV comedy? I mean, is it not possible to be smart and funny at home or in social situations? There are some where he is smart, but generally not funny (the straight man - see Dharma & Greg)

Do you think that, in these same comedies that the women (mainly wives) will be in the same league as the schlub hubbies? Do you think that these same women will ever be portrayed as anything more than "I've-had-it-up-to-here-with-this-imbecile!" and ta-tas?

The only one coming to mind right now that was very popular is the Cosby Show...that's kinda sad. I mean:

Everybody Loves Raymond - great show, but hubby is a doofus and wife with nice ta-tas is out of his league and has had it up to here with him.

King of Queens - Bad show, same as ELR, but 10x more

Still Standing - Awful show, the league discrepancy is astronomical, though both husband and wife, while both being major doofuses are raising generally smart kids...

Yes, Dear - Mildly amusing, but generally annoying show. The league thing isn't as bad, and Jean Louise Kelly is the only thing that keeps it tolerable. Did you know she's a graphic designer on the show? But Anthony Clark is a classic case of smart, but not funny.

Joey - doofus

Will & Grace - hmmmm, dunno, a lot of discussion on whether will is actually funny or not...otherwise it may be the exception. (Grace isn't always annoyed with him and doesn't have ta-tas.)

George Lopez - AAAAACK!!!!

According to Jim - the absolute bottom, worse than anything Fox, UPN and WB have ever put on (sitcoms only)...How did this show make it past 2 episodes? How did Courtney Thorne-Smith agree to do this show?

Well, /rant.

Oh, and don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining about the ta-tas, I likey! Just does every guy have to be a dork and every wife have to be über-annoyed with him?

Dave

Cargo

from New Jersey to somewhere. When I drive down 95 to work, I've noticed a lot of cars from New Jersey on the road. Don't know where they're going, but it just seems odd to see so many when the shortest drive to that point is about an hour. I guess they are heading to DC, but still, that's a really long trip to make every day.

Anyway, that was my clumsy intro to the fact that I saw "Garden State" over the weekend. I guess it was fine if you like watching Zach Braff stare a lot and Natalie Portman giggle (Ok, that wasn't so bad). It had moments where it was funny, but mainly was about as numbed as Zach's character was in the movie. Can I get an amen for a Scrubs movie???!!!!

Also on the downside of movies, one of the local video chains (read: has that back room) must have bitten the no-late-fee dust kicked up by Netflix and Blockbuster. I swung by to pick up some 18 and over entertainment and the place was empty. Surely it hadn't been all that long since I was there last, and there was no indication that they were closing. Damn, only sleazy places to get fun stuff now! ;-) Maybe I can start Netflixxx!

Dave