Is there a cure for wicked weather and the blahs?

Plant entrance this morning....
Snow piled up from parking lot....

A wee bit chilly this afternoon....

On the way to work this a.m....

Warm and cozy....

It was about -4F when I went to work this morning. It was -4F when I left to come home this evening. It's -9 now and getting colder. More. Please give me more!

I overslept this morning and woke up at 6 a.m., which is when I usually leave for work. I forgot to set my alarm last night. Must be a sign of old age. Anyway, I got up and brushed my teeth then shaved and walked to the back door to see what had happened overnight. I couldn't even see either of our cars since both were completely buried under a massive snow drift. Sweet! I threw on my carharts and boots, pulled on a stocking cap and gloves and stepped out into the bitterly cold morning. Refreshing! Woohoo! All I could do was to try to shovel a path between our cars to get to the garage in order to get at the snow blower. It was light and fluffy snow, which I was immensely thankful for. I fired up the old gray beast and started blowing snow. 7 inches overnight on top of the three inches that we received on Monday night. Ah well, tis Iowa in winter. I got to work an hour later than usual, which is unusual for me, and I left a nice clean driveway for Judy. I'm sure she appreciated that, even if she didn't tell me so. Poop happens.

It's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of -20 F tonight. Sounds like it will be cold Friday too followed by a warm-up beginning on Saturday. 20 above zero sounds pretty good right now.

I spent an hour on the trainer tonight pushing a medium gear at a fairly high cadence. I need to get in shape so I can kick Fatty's ass this spring on the 2nd Street roll out. Once we get to Division Street, I don't care anymore. It's just the mile from the shop to Division that I care about. Did you get that, Fat Albert? I'm going to kick your ass on 2nd Street!

Actually, I've already ridden the trainer more this year than I did all of last year and some days, actually most days, I look forward to it. A little GnR or AC/DC and I'm good. Maybe some Billy Idol or old Stones. It works for me.

Anyone want to talk politics? Could be interesting. Definitely plenty to talk about. I read in the paper tonight that our illustrious governor is taking his cue from the feds and wants to borrow 700 million to spend on infrastructure repairs and to create 28,000 jobs and stimulate the Iowa economy. He's gonna do it without raising taxes. He just plans to use the "state's profits" from the casinos to pay it back. Hmmmm..... Whatcha gonna do Chet, when the economy really gets bad and folks stop going to the casinos? Politicians are all crazy. I take that back. The people who believe anything that a politician says are all crazy. Or STOOPID. Timothy Geithner "forgot" he needed to pay self-employment taxes for 4 years in a row on money he earned from the IMF, even after signing a document in each of the years that he failed to pay those taxes that acknowledged that he understood that he was responsible for paying them. They're calling it a boo-boo. An oversight. A little mistake. Hmmmmm..... He's gonna take over Treasury, which is responsible for the IRS, and he doesn't even know that he's responsible for his own self-employment taxes. The IRS even "forgave" the penalty for 2 of the four years. Do you think they'd do that for you or me? Folks, it just ain't possible that a fella with his intelligence, position, and background just forgot something like that. If you believe that it's possible, well, I have some ocean front property in Arizona that I'd like to sell you. Great deal, too. I also see that both parties in congress are balking at the President Elect's $800,000,000,000.00 "economic recovery" package. It's a little late to be waking up, folks. Oh well. It's all good.

On second thought, lets not talk politics. It upsets my tummy.

I think that's about it for now.

Ride safe.

Peace out, yo!