[********, It’s Cold!—1/30/2010
The snow came just as the weather forecast said it would this weekend. Mom said she heard that this is the worst snow storm South Hampton Roads has had since 1988. As one may have expected, there was a lot of mindless panic at the grocery store as people either too poor to own or too stupid to operate a 4-wheel drive vehicle scrambled to stock up on food, causing the grocery stores to run out of bread and milk quickly.
Snow is a fairly significant, albeit rare, occurrence in my great state the Commonwealth of Virginia, at least in South Hampton Roads. It snowed a bit last year, but there wasn’t any accumulation on the streets; everything either melted and turned to icy rain before it hit the ground, or simply turned into an ugly muddy slush. In fact, I don’t think there’s been any significant snow accumulation around here since around January of 2004—and that was maybe only an inch or so. The weather forecast this weekend called for 4-10 inches of snow, which I think is fairly accurate, judging from the fact that both of my Dachshunds Cloe and Johnny sunk down into the snow up to their stomachs when my mother put them outside to relieve themselves since they kept peeing in the house—which I don’t blame them for doing since it’s bitter cold outside right now. When I stepped outside the house to take the trash out, as soon as I put my feet in the snow, it felt as though someone had smacked me in my bad left ankle with a sledgehammer! And to only bring more of an unpleasant reminder of just how cold it is outside for this part of our state, I noticed that the snow has actually camouflaged our house from the other houses. Normally—and I don’t mean to brag—we have the most noticeable house on the whole street, if not the entire block, due to that big red Hummer H-3 my mother has parked in the driveway every day; even when the Hummer is gone, the meticulous landscaping my step-father has done still makes our house stand out. But when I looked out the living room window on the side of the house, I noticed that the snow in one spot of the drive way was piled up at least a good 4 and ¼ inches and that my mother’s red Hummer H-3 was barely distinguishable from other cars since the red was hidden underneath a thick layer of icy white.
This “winter wonderland” we have right now reminds me of some rather amusing commentary from the ever-colorful and cynical comedian known as Lewis Black, during one of his performances in New York City:
“It was a really special winter, wasn’t it? If you’re a ******** moose! If you’ve got fur on your nuts, it’s been a ******** festival! It was the coldest winter ever! I thought last winter was the coldest winter ever, but I was ******** wrong, wasn’t I? See, because I travel all the time. So last winter, I’d be in the Midwest, and the blizzard would hit; and then I’d fly home, and the blizzard would hit again! But it has been way too cold this winter on the East Coast. I mean, the temperatures have been ungodly! Where the ******** is global warming when you need it!? I think the people of this city should literally every day have been on the streets with aerosol cans! Nobody should have to live like this! And even if they hadn’t told me, I would have known it was the coldest winter ever…because I have not had one thought. I have not been able to complete a sentence in my own head. I find myself walking around going, ‘You know what I should really… ********, it’s cold!!’”
I’ll sure be really damn happy when spring gets here. ********, it’s cold…!
