A little late but it's my bad

Chillin' or chilled? He looks cold to me.

I totally own the fact that this week's update from TMFKATB is completely my fault. I was in a snowy, slushy (not to be confused with the famed Slushie, but gross, dirty, shoe destroying, melting snow slushy) Manhattan from Monday afternoon until this evening and I have yet to master the art of blogging to the standard upon which you all have become accustomed via the Blogger app on my iPhone. It gives me fits, I'm telling you, fits. I did try but the formatting was hideous, so I voted no.

As for this week's brief letter, it was a week of #firstworldproblems, Mormon missionary style for TMFKATB and his companion. They got snowed on (Utah winter = snow). Then their car died on a snowy morning. Then they got a free meal at Brazilian churrascaria. They stayed busy and had some successful teaching sessions. Like I said, tough week.

I love getting these letters. While they'll never be recognized for their detail-rich writing, each week brings a picture of these two years of service that is uniquely his. It's great to see him maturing, but I love that his personality still roars through each week. As I've said before, it makes me happy. That's all I need right now.

Hysteria

Hysteria, thy name is Winter Storm Jonas.

Not familiar with Jonas, are you? Then you mustn't live on or near the East Coast, or if you're smart, you've elected to NOT watch television. For those of you familiar with television, you know that right now, it's all Jonas all the time for us denizens of the East Coast. It's DefCon 5 or maximum hysteria for the local weather prognosticators. Even here in the 'Stan, where we aren't expected to take the spanking that say Washington DC is predicted to get, it's RED ALERT, people, RED ALERT. Call me a hater but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's a bit of hyperbolic overkill.

This hysteria that always seems to accompany these 'storm of the century' events kills me. Are we so ill-prepared as a nation that the threat of being indoors for a day, maybe two, requires the absolute obliteration of the neighborhood grocery store? Are you really going to make that many sandwiches over the course of 24 or 48 hours that every bit of bread is gone from the shelves? Do you really need a pallet of bottled water to get you through those two days? It's not like this nation is some kind of Third World country, although for anyone who's ever flown through LaGuardia you may disagree. Who in this country is going to the market each and every day to buy that day's sustenance? Pretty much no one and yet, once again, panicked people are launching assaults on the Piggly Wiggly as if they were a Kardashian who was told there was free money on the other side of a brick wall. You'd be a fool to get in the way, right?

One day we'll learn to deal with these things. Keep some food and other necessities around and you can avoid all this madness. As for me and my house, we're ready for the terrifying specter of three inches of snow. I've got plenty of Coke Zero, a snow shovel, and an environmentally offensive 4-wheel drive GMC Yukon. So no hysteria here. Although, I may need these to sustain me through the storm:

@junkfoodguy.com

So keep calm, my friends, and enjoy the snow.

Winter's Discontent

@deseretnews.com

Now is the winter of our discontent.

"Richard III" - William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare coined that prophetic phrase in 1594. Four hundred and twenty one - 421 - years later, I would say, without doubt, that we are truly in our own winter of discontent.

Why, you ask?

The snow. The shoveling. Throw in some delightful wind chill. Then more snow. Then more shoveling. It's turned into a vicious cycle. It's like we are on a never-ending hamster wheel in Satan's playground and, quite frankly, we are ready to get off. Perhaps the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML and I have both have a raging case of seasonal affective disorder (also known as SAD, without a hint of irony). Who knows? But as we crept down our hill on the snow-packed road this morning to go get some religion, we both looked at each other with a knowing look that said, 'It's enough already.' True that.

A state of discontentment can actually be a good thing. It's usually an uncomfortable state to be in and it's not something you want to wallow in. Unless of course you like that state of mind. However, if managed appropriately, discontentment spurns change. I think it's safe to say we are ready for that here. While we have no control over the shrewish and angry hag that is Mother Nature, I am determined she will not get the better of us.

I'm taking this quote from the late Gandhi to heart: 

@quotes.lifehack.org

Progress it is. Progress it shall be. In the meantime, Mother Nature, you won't win this one, even if it kills me.

Slipping and Sliding

This. Kind of this.

Paul Simon, he who did not sport the bad white guy perm, of Simon and Garfunkel, penned a song called "Slip Slidin Away." The opening verse goes like this:

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

Those lyrics became all too real for us as we drove home from getting religion earlier this afternoon. As we motored up the hill to our home, the more we found ourselves sliding away from it. This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a good feeling when you are slipping backward in a GMC Yukon the size and weight of an armed artillery tank. We owe this slippery sensation to that she-shrew, the one and only Mother Nature. She decided to get freaky today.

Things took a weird turn as we drove to Church early this morning. When we left the house, it was not quite raining or sleeting but it was like a frozen mist was falling. No big whoop, I thought, as we drove. Then, out of nowhere, our windshield was frozen over. 'That escalated quickly,' I thought to myself. It felt like we were in a scene from a craptastic disaster movie (thy name is 'The Day After Tomorrow'). Walking through the Church parking lot into the building was a slippery affair but once we were inside, I didn't give it much further thought. I was speaking in Church today so was a little more focused on that than what the aforementioned she-shrew was going to do during our services.

Three hours later (and no, I did not speak for three hours. I mean I can go on and on but not for three hours-have mercy!), it is now pouring rain but because everything is already frozen over, the rain really has nowhere to go. That's where things turned very interesting getting up the long hill to our home. Since the rain had nowhere to go, it pretty much turned to ice. Suffice to say, my tank did not like the conditions. Frankly, neither did the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML. Her death grip on both the door handle and her seat belt was quite impressive. Impressive, in the end, was the performance of my environmentally offensive, but totally awesome, Yukon. She may not have liked it and the groaning from her engine made that clear, but we got home safely.

I am now glancing out the window from the warmth of my basement while I take my online driving school course. While in Arizona for Thanksgiving a few months ago, I may or may not have been captured on a traffic cam exceeding the posted speed limit somewhere in Gila County. Um...have you been to Gila County? You'd speed too but like I said, may or may not. Allegedly. This is four hours of my life I'm not getting back either.  Good times.