The Aerie
Well, it's a start.
Okay, so I haven't, been keeping up with this thing. But I did return
to my daily gym schedule starting last Monday, and so far so good.
True, I have to juggle the numbers a bit: Sunday I took the kids
swimming at the gym. That's not quite an 80% cardio workout, but it
has a value of its own, so I'm not going to sweat it. Tomorrow could
be tricky, with a morning appointment, a lunch meeting and writing
group in the evening. It might be hard to squeeze the gym in there,
but I suppose I could go AFTER writing group. We'll see.
Meanwhile I've been working on increasing the number of billable hours
that I work. During the Dog Days of summer when we had nothing I
became so habituated to the search for new opportunities that I'm
having to very deliberately think in terms of working the billable
hours now that the opportunities are at hand. Ridiculous really, but
there I am: so worried about selling more jobs that I feel like
working on a job is counterproductive.
I'll get over it though.
Meanwhile autumn has slumped in like Mrs. Whatsit and emptied its
galoshes all over the neighborhood. The leaves had only just turned
when this incessant cold rain arrived and started sluicing them out of
the trees. My spouse is worried about cleaning out the gardens before
the ground freezes, and though I assure her that there will be some
sunny 50 degree days before winter crushes the drooping plants in its
icy grip, I'm privately not so sure.
Strangely, however, I'm up for a cold winter again. The last two have
been so warm that a lot of pests have failed to die in their winter
burrows, and its leading to trouble with crops, the trees, and local
politics. But, more importantly, we need another two-week stretch of
subzero weather to re-establish our Minnesota bragging rights.
"Forty below? Yeah, I love it! Same temperature, Farenheit or Celsius,
no conversion necessary."
"Cold? Yeah, I suppose it's a mite nippy, why? Oh, is that your ear?
Here, let me get it for you. You know, if you stick it on with tape
before it thaws, the whole thing will just heal back together."
So my hope is, we'll warm up next week in time for Hallowe'en, then
drop back off into the cold. Hallowe'en is like Guiness: best served
at about 55 degrees. You don't want it so cold that the kids have to
wear parkas over their costumes, and you don't want it so hot that the
costumes get hot and uncomfortable. Fifty-five is just right.
And lets not even talk about 1991. Hallowe'en that night was on a
Thursday (just like this year!) I left for my Thursday Night Game just
as the snow began to fall, warm wet flakes that promised an
attractively frosted morning. Little did I know.
At 10:00 o'clock Amber came in and said, "It's really snowing, if you
guys are going to get home, you probably should go." We thought she
was nuts. How much could it be snowing? But we looked anyway.
Everything was covered in snow. It looked like the aftermath of a
March blizzard, when a foot of snow falls atop a season of snow. We
couldn't believe our eyes.
I was still driving the Mazda back then, and its transmission was
never the same. Phil and Amber live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and we
spent the next two hours digging a trench down the length of the
street. All except Keith, of course, who managed to escape to Nicollet
Avenue by trusting to luck and barrelling forward at full tilt,
leaving us all behind to shovel each other out.
By midnight we'd reached the cross-street, and when I got there with
the Mazda I had a choice: right the way Keith had left two hours
earlier, sharply uphill around a curve; or left, sharply downhill, and
over to the freeway. Left seemed the best choice, with the slope
aiding my journey and quickly-plowed freeway service roads thereafter.
Right suggested a slow, uphill, fishtailing grind, ending in a
snowbank or the car turned sideways in the street.
I turned left.
One hundred feet down the next block, a van had turned sideways in the
road and blocked it, abandoned.
Of course, having come downhill to reach it, I could by no means get
my front-wheel-drive car to reverse up the very hill I had avoided
climbing in the first place. So at midnight, after having shoveled an
entire street, I got out of my car and shoveled a path AROUND the
abandoned van.
An hour alter I maneuvered my way downhill past the van, and all went
well thereafter. The Mazda plowed its way down the rest of the
unshoveled street, aided by the slope of the hill. At the bottom was a
parkway that had been partially cleared by plows heading for the
freeway, and by 3:00 a.m. the freeway itself was clear and easy
driving.
But the transmission on the Mazda was shot. Never did get it fixed
before trading it in on a minivan a few months later.
No, that was a fun year. Like a gangster who wants to let you know
who's boss, it snowed almost exactly as much four weeks later: a
second blow to let us know there's more like that waiting. By April I
was so sick of eight-foot-high snow drifts I was about ready to move
to Florida.
That's how Floridians get that way. Northern weather drives them
crazy, and Florida sets the crazy in their souls like a bad stain.
Then you end up with Jeb Bush and Orlando and Cuba policy.
Which is why we need a nice, brutally cold winter. To push the
nutcases and the lunatics over the edge and send them off to Florida,
scouring the state of mild insanity and leaving only the truly, deeply
disturbed behind. Who knows, if it's cold enough maybe even Jesse
Ventura will move, saying "I ain't got time to freeze!"
C'mon COLD!
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Posted by Albatross at October 21, 2002 12:00 AM