Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Brrrrrrrr

Minus 9 right now, with a forecast high of -2 (F, for you international reader) and a low of -20. This means I'll have to go downcellar, take the plywood panel off the crawlspace entrance (oh, the smell) and open the door to the furnace room so the pipes in the crawlspace don't freeze.

For some reason this reminds me of the winters in central Illinois in the latish 70s when I still lived out there. Bitter cold, high winds, lots of snow. Around midnight on such nights I liked nothing better than to get in my ' 74 Dodge Dart (5.2 liter V8 318) drive out in the country and buck snowdrifts.

That car was something. Not counting the engine it probably weighed about seven pounds. And it flew. Literally, when you hit a two-foot drift across the road at 50 miles an hour.

But I was prepared for disaster. Warm clothes, beer, sleeping bag, beer, book, flashlight, beer. . .

Once, disaster struck. Boom, over a snowdrift, sqweeeee! right off the road and into the ditch. The front end of the car was buried up to the windshield. Oh, well. Snuggle, burp, book (probably, God h'ep me, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), snort, bwee-bwee-bwee-bwee.

Woke up to bright sunshine and a farmer clearing his driveway with a front-end loader. Hook up a chain, pop! and putting home.

Sorry, random memory trace. So, have you been watching Pawn Stars? I just got hooked. That Corey is a gigantic sack of crap, isn't he?

Update: The pirate with the slant-six parrot has several good Wart posts (I've been kind of out of it), including this one via Westword (and the Wart-laving Michael Roberts) featuring both Wart and his little crap-dog Benjie lying to the end. Benjie actually claims (again) that CU didn't get rid of him because of his filthy, slanderous, now-disappeared blogs, and that he didn't want to teach anymore, anyhow. Yeah, sure.

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