Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I am SO snowed in…nine inches of snow in the driveway sandwiched with ice, and the snowblower isn’t blowing. Which blows would be even more inconvenient if my neighborhood streets didn’t ALSO have over six inches of snow sandwiched with ice on them, totally untouched by snowplows. And I’m not the worst off, either. The count so far…

One coworker under snow emergency in Hendricks County.

One coworker in Hamilton County whose front door is drifted shut.

One coworker in Hamilton County who accidently left the garage door open overnight and now has a drift in the garage.

One coworker on the south side whose door is frozen shut.

One coworker on the south side who got as far as city streets, which are completely sheeted with ice.

One coworker downtown whose car is surrounded by two feet of snow.

One coworker assiduously digging out.

One coworker gracefully yielding to good sense and working from home.

Two bar exam study buddies in Hamilton County snowed in.

On the plus side, one dad safely home from Austin as of last night…although I’m sure it took some doing.

I should’ve made French toast.

UPDATE: And I’m going to have an overdue library book.

But I’m a lemming in Eagle Pose.

Tiny Fairville, Indiana is appropriately named; it hasn’t suffered from severe winter weather in fifty-two years. I had to know why, and my computer models weren’t working.

I arrived in late January, twenty-four hours before a major storm was predicted. I stopped for milk, eggs and bread…along with every other resident of Fairville.

True to form, the storm passed by. Willard, the grocer, was unsurprised. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” he intoned cryptically.

After two years, I determined that when 100% of residents buy milk, bread, and eggs within 12 hours of a storm…it misses.

Nature actually abhors low French-toast concentrations.

Author’s note: I’ve never understood what it is about severe winter weather that makes people want to eat French toast…and this was the only logical explanation I could come up with.

So, A IM’s me to ask how much memory my computer has, because A’s has less memory than B’s, but B’s is running slower.

Me: Has B defragged?

A: Yes.

Me: System scan?

A: Yes.

Me: Sacrificed a goat to the appropriate god?

A: Not sure.

B: How about a Microsoft mouse?

D: Have you ever formated a document for electronic signatures?

Me: No, I haven’t. I didn’t know any areas here were doing that.

D: Yeah, we are but it’s formatted with lines and the [Approver] won’t sign off on it ‘cos he says it looks like a paper document.

Me: *facepalm*

D: Yeah and if I take the lines out, then “Print name, Signature, Department, and Date” are all just floating in air.

Me: Tell your [Approver] it’s part of the document template.

D: Ummm, he isn’t the type to accept that.

Me: Does anyone else care if you take the lines out?

D: I don’t see why they would. The information is still there.

Me: Then you may as well take them out and live with the floating.

D: Yeah, I know but my desktop publishing type brain is cringing at it.

Me: Close your eyes and think of England.

G: You’re really into the irony, aren’t you?

Me: I take an irony supplement every morning.

Identical twins aren’t completely identical; Celeste’s feet are a half-size larger than mine. It didn’t stop her from borrowing my brand-new, designer “glass” slippers when she sneaked out of the house to go dancing, though. I was furious!

Imagine my surprise when a nice young man showed up a few days later, asking for the young lady who fit the slipper! I pulled its lost mate out of the closet, and naturally, they fit perfectly. The young man—prince—swept me off to his castle.

How can I not live happily ever after with a guy who’s that into shoes?

Sharktank’s plumbing problems are contagious. Fortunately, it’s the inorganic plumbing that’s the problem.

Yesterday evening, Housemate and I came home from the gym to discover that our pipes had frozen…during the day. We had cold running water in the kitchen, and that was it. Housemate bundled up and went into the crawlspace. Fortunately, the problem didn’t seem to be there…which left us both puzzled. After consulting a couple of reliable sources, both print and human, he went out to the garage with a hair dryer to work on the short length of exposed pipe there.

Just as an aside, I don’t recall ever having used my current hair dryer on my hair, but it’s been great for craft projects, shrink-wrapping windows, and unfreezing the pipes.

In the mean time, Housemate sent me out for a flame spreader for his propane torch and some heating tape. Now, I know you’re not supposed to use a blowtorch on frozen plumbing because of thermal shock, but it seems that propane torches are less risky, particularly with the right attachment…which my hardware store of choice did not have.

By this time, it was nearly eight o’clock at night, so I got the heating tape and headed back home…to discover that Housemate had unfrozen the pipes. We had hot and cold running water everywhere!

I swear, if he gets any more useful, I’m going to have to pay him to stay…and I’m not sure I can afford it.

“Eye of newt, toe of frog—” Eldest chanted sonorously.

“Are you sure it’s not eye of frog, toe of newt?” Middle butted in.

“Newt doesn’t rhyme with dog,” Youngest pointed out.

“What?”

“The next two ingredients are wool of bat, tongue of dog.”

“That can’t be right…bats don’t have wool,” Middle insisted.

“That’s the way mom always made it.”

“Fine talk from one who can’t boil water!”

“It takes more than just a ‘bubble, bubble, toil and trouble;’ it takes work…something else you know nothing about,” Middle’s voice climbed with each word.

“We should’ve just gotten takeout,” Youngest muttered.

We were enjoying perfect football weather; clear, slightly cool, and crisp, with no wind. Unfortunately, we were sadly lacking in perfect football, losing to Wisconsin 21-0 by the end of the first quarter. By halftime, it was 42-3.

I swear, if our quarterback had half a brain, his ass would be lopsided.

The UW fans were chanting “Go, Badgers!” incessantly by the end of the third. My cameraman apparently couldn’t take it anymore, and yelled back “Go home!”

The crowd picked up the chant. Wisconsin’s mascot flashed the finger.

I couldn’t help myself.

“Badgers? We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers!”