Winter might be around the corner...

"Now that my wife and I are retired, unless we have booked a cruise or are heading down to Florida in the winter, should the weather take a turn for the awful, we just make a fire and just watch it snow. It is good to catch up on my reading or other inside jobs. So long as my furnace keeps working and I don't run out of wood - I am good."

Hello? Is that you Mr. Winter? I would like to say it is good to see you again, but it is too close to Sunday to tell a huge lie such as that. I know, I know - we need your snow to cover our earth to make sure the coming spring has adequate topsoil moisture. If you could just give us the snow and no wind, no Polar Express, and no icy roads - then maybe we could be friends. But you are the party crasher. The season with no mercy. And next week, our weather is going to turn. Not to snow as yet, but it is getting much, much closer.

Back in my working days, I had to fly to Washington (and some other locations) quite often. Many times, it was nip and tuck for me making the 40-mile drive to the airport when it was snowing. I was lucky. Never got into a wreck when the conditions were horrible. Missed my flight only a couple of times. Sometimes I had a mid-day meeting in Washington, so I would drive to the airport in blinding snow, take off in the same blinding snow, land back home when the snow was finished, and then endure a long crappy drive home. How many times did I do that? Too many.

Now that my wife and I are retired, unless we have booked a cruise or are heading down to Florida in the winter, should the weather take a turn for the awful, we just make a fire and just watch it snow. It is good to catch up on my reading or other inside jobs. So long as my furnace keeps working and I don't run out of wood - I am good.

I think I might have told this story before. While I was working at the Control Data Company, my department hired somebody (internally) who was working in San Fransico. She had very little exposure to living in a climate like ours. One day in February I went into her office to ask a question. She did not look very good - she was down in the dumps. When I asked how things were going, she replied, "Do you know the three things you grow in Minnesota?" I was going to guess corn, beans, and sugar beets, but I didn't think her question was going that way. I told her that I give up - what is it? "Older, colder, and fatter. How in the world do you people put up with this weather?" It was a question I could not answer.

In any event, my dreams of wintering by a beach in Western Florida went "poof" when our grandkids were born. Our tether to them is strong and unbreakable - grandma makes sure of that! So, we make do during the cold and snowy season. Things could be worse. We could be living 150 years ago and have a life like Per Hansa. Or we could be like our wild turkeys, who sit up in our pine trees and shiver all day.