Monday, February 07, 2011

Everything's Perfectly All Right Now. We're Fine. We're All Fine Here Now, Thank You. How Are You?

Everything's under control. Situation normal. Thanks for asking. In case you somehow managed to not get clobbered over the head by the media last week, Chicago and in a fact a very large swath of the entire country got hammered by a blizzard last Tuesday and Wednesday. I was not one of the poor souls who got trapped in their cars on Lake Shore Drive all night long last Tuesday, mainly because when meteorologists nationwide all say "There is going to be a big fuck off storm, stay inside" and the local meteorologists say "The big fuck off storm is going to be worst near the shoreline of Lake Michigan, don't use Lake Shore Drive", I assume that they probably know more than I do and I STAY INSIDE, far, far away from Lake Shore Drive. Morons.

I woke up Wednesday morning to find that it looked like Hoth outside and a renewed interesting in buying this. Now, I don't attend a lot of sleep overs these days and when I do they rarely involve my having to sleep on the floor because my friends are grown ups with spare bedrooms or at least a couch. But I think we can all agree this sleeping bag should be filed under "Need" rather than under "Want".

I also experienced that most elusive of all storms - thundersnow. I'm sure there's a very good scientific reason why it almost never thunders during a snowstorm and that H-town or the bartender can tell you all about it while you pretend to be paying attention during their nerdgasm (speaking of nerdgams, Chicagoans, was anyone else concerned that Tom Skilling might rip his clothes off from his overwhelming excitement over this severe weather? Because I was happy for him and everything but, seriously, no one needs to see that). All I know is, thunder during a snow storm is awesomely rare and now that I've experienced it I'm merely one tornado away from being ready to die.

The only other severe blizzard I've lived through nearly killed me (and it actually DID kill 70 other people). The Great Blizzard of 1978 barrelled into Cleveland on January 25th of that year. I was two weeks old. My parents were noobs at the whole parenting thing, what with me being their first child and all, and they were totally unprepared for the apocalypse that completely buried every door to the house. They were trapped. Then they ran out of baby formula for me. Big thanks to the Middleburg Heights police department for answering my parents' call for help by going to the store, buying me formula, and then digging a tunnel to our front door in order to deliver said formula (which they refused to let my parents pay for, bless) and keep me from starving to death. When I told that story to the CEO he said "Oh, so THAT'S what's wrong with you." It's one of the things.