Winter 2.0

After a couple of weeks of 60 - 70F here, we are plunging back into the chill of winter.  It's not supposed to be any deep freeze or anything too nasty, just cold 30's F, wind & possibly some rain.  Hopefully it will put my allergies on hold for a while.   A lot of people are griping that they've already started getting ready for spring.  So, like Winter cars what you're ready for, it's going to be cold regardless of what you wanted.

The little groundhog lied, or at least wink-wink-nudge-nudged.

The point is, that there are a lot of things in this life you can't prepare for, but there are plenty of others that you can & even more you should have expected.  Just because it's felt like Spring around here for a couple of weeks doesn't change the fact we still have another month of actual Winter.  Putting away your extra blankets, turning off your heater's pilot light or anything else you might do to dewinterize your home is just plain dumb until you've seen a week of solid upper 70's & possibly a couple of 80 F days.  This may be the time to plan for your gardens & start thinking about where you'd like to spend Spring Break (if you get one), but it's still Winter.

There are so many times in our lives when we just plain fail to register our situations or at least have failed to have planned for them.  This is common when we're young, possibly even acceptable in some situations.  I love  Sandra Rinomato's show Property Virgins.

It always amazes me how little preparation these people have done to get ready to buy a home.  They don't understand the property values, they have no idea what closing costs are, what's a property inspection, etc...  I may not know all of this, but you can bet if I was going to buy a home, I'd start doing some serious research on the matter.  It's all on the net.

If information is available & accessible to you & you refuse to utilize it then you aren't ignorant, you're being willfully uninformed (read stupid).  It doesn't matter if your talking about how to ride out the seasonal weather, buying a home or avoiding becoming +, all the info is out there for you to use.  If you don't employ this information than you have no one but yourself to blame for whatever happens.

This isn't to say that if you play by the rules & have all the available info on hand you won't have problems.  You can still run into a lot of hell.  Around here, we have notable Winters, usually in the teens to twenties.  Sometimes we touch the zero mark on the thermometer, but this year we hit -30F in some place & got over two feet of snow in less than a week.  If you're in Vermont or the like, that's probably common, but here in Oklahoma, that's hella' cold.  Mr. Mike Holmes has proven that buying a home even with a home inspection can be a nightmarish experience.  Nowadays, most of us know that there is safer sex, not safe sex.

Preparedness is an ongoing investment into one's own situation.  You can't say yeah I have a flashlight & batteries, then be upset when it doesn't work because the batteries are five years old.  It is your own responsibility to be as knowledgeable & prepared as possible.  No one is going to do it for you.  If it's winter, act & dress appropriately.  If you're going to buy a house teach yourself all that you can before going into the market.  If you're going to have sex, wear a condom, but be aware it's just one level of protection & it can fail.

In all aspects of life, your safety is your responsibility.   Be careful, so you can have fun with the rest of your life.

I'm Desended From Monkeys, The Hell You say...

I can't have been descended from monkeys or apes. Whatever, I came from, either developed in a nice moderate climate that never got to hot or too cold or I am descended from bears.  Bears, I'll buy that.  In my opinion there is only one thing to really do when it gets cold, hibernate.  

Yes, you should stock up on reserves, find a nice dark, cave-ish place (preferably with lots of blankets) & set your alarm for Spring Time.  Past the winter holidays there isn't mush good about Winter & I'm sure all those gifts will hold to spring.  If it's perishable, just set it on the floor in back room & I'm sure it'll stay frozen.

I do not like cold, at least not to any discernible level over hot.  I prefer a nice middle ground, extremes are just a drag.  I know the cold weather is necessary.  It resets everything.  It lets the plants rest & bugs die off.  I still don't like it.  Let me eat up, stock up, pile on the blankets & turn off the lights, cause I ready to sleep until at least March, maybe April.

Getting out of bed in the winter is act of utter betrayal & cruelty to one's body.  You are in your nice toasty place & have to leave it for the frozen level of hell your home has given refuge to for the season.  Which is worse, the cold floor, the cold keyboards or the cold toilet seat?  You take your pick.  And, all of this is on the inside.

If you venture out in the bitterness, you face ice, snow or sleet (that non-committal stuff).  Icy weather is never good & just because winter is gone doesn't mean icy weather is, there is always hail.  Outdoors leads to slippage, either on your butt or fishtailing across the road.

They say over the hills & through the dales.  To hell with that BS, if granny wants to see you tell her to come to you or get Skype, that is if your warm enough to still work the computer.  They say cold is good for computers, again BS.  I never get blue-screens any other time of the year like I do in the winter.  My little Dell hates, repeat hates, the cold.  It acts like a person, because the first things to screw up are the peripheral devices & their drivers.  You know the computer's fingers & toes.  They get frostbite.

Enough for now, my warm bed & cov-covs are calling me.