Incoherent Rambling

Some days, you really have something good, and some days you just do it out of obligation.

That's a blogging-marriage metaphor, in case it was too obscure for you. Sometimes I wonder if being a Me, CherkyB reader actually lowers your IQ, or if it's just you.

I'm not going to warn of a CJ-quality post tonight, because last time I did that, I ripped out a masterpiece. But here we are at paragraph three, and I still haven't thought of anything much to say. And I've already insulted both my readers and CJ. That doesn't bode well. I've pretty much got that old standby of insulting The JohnnyB in my back pocket in case of emergencies, but after that, the well is dry.

We'll have to see if my good friend JackyD thinks of anything for me to write about along the way. Until then, I'll fake it.

We've been having a bit of a cold spell here in the Fort TomCollins area. We've had snow on the ground for 5 days now, which I am told is unusual. I've now gotten a good feel for the excitement that is driving a pickup truck on hard-pack snow and ice in rear-wheel drive mode. These uphill starts from stoplights on highly crowned roads are a bit problematic, since they neither plow nor salt anything other than main streets around here. But, hey, my years of driving in snow and ice in the Barfalo/Rottenchester metro areas have really paid off. In the five days, I have only made a right turn and ended up facing left once. And that was one of those "this is a really big intersection with no traffic at all, and I wonder if I can power slide through the turn like a sprint car" kind of things.

The answer, as it turns out, is no. Same answer I got about 18 years ago when I was driving a friend's IROC-Z back from bowling league in the rain (cuz he was too drunk to drive it), and he yelled, "Punch it!" when I was making a left on campus, and, well, I had never driven an IROC-Z before, and I punched it, and I ended up facing right. I learned then that when you are driving drunk people home, it's often not the best idea to take their advice on how to drive.

I think we won the championship that year.

So The Mrs. had me come home from work early on Friday to take HannieC and her friend from across the street, LizzyS, sledding. Our subdivision sit atop a hill, looking down upon the riff-raff that is "the meadows" below (though the meadows has recently added a golf course in an attempt to raise their level of cachet), and there is a whole bunch of open space up front isolating the housing plots from the main drag. There's an OK-sized hill (perfect for a 6-year old) up there, and so we all piled in the pickup and headed there. I mostly kept the truck in 4wd mode so as to not do anything too exciting with The Kiddies on board.

The hill turned out to be pretty good, but the girlies turned out to be a couple of lazy, flabby babies. They went down the hill maybe 10 times each, and then they kinda just stood there looking stupid and complaining of being bored. Then, along came a couple boys who were going over the jump (made of plywood and 2x4's) and one of them was riding a snowboard instead of a sled. They sat and watched the boys for like 20 minutes, then got bored again and asked to go home.

Then, naturally, they had a discussion about how tomorrow was Saturday, and they could go sledding for the entire day.

Riiiiight.