Seems like those ingrates out east get one every single year. And every single year, they’re shocked and taken completely unawares. What a bunch of dopes. Buy some plows, why don’t you? Oh, yeah; they’ve got ‘em. I remember a few years ago, the plow drivers used a snow storm in NYC as leverage to get a raise for the union. People actually died because emergency vehicles couldn’t get through the snow the greedy plow operators refused to remove. I don’t think anyone was prosecuted but I think whoever called for the action should have gone to jail for manslaughter.
We’ve got plows aplenty here in the land of sky blue water. We don’t pull them out every time it snows; it has to be at least a few inches before they’ll declare a snow emergency. At that point, everyone knows to move their cars off the designated ‘snow emergency routes’ so the plows can do their thing. Our biggest problem occurs in the years after a few light snowfall years. Inevitable, the city decides we’ll never have a lot of snow again, cuts the budget for plows, the next winter we get six feet and they weep and cry that taxes need to be raised because we can’t afford to plow our streets.
Sure, winter brings its problems but I love it anyway.
MJ and I bundled tater tot up yesterday and walked a couple of miles down the creek parkway. There’s just something invigorating about working up a sweat when the temperature is below freezing. Of course, by this time of winter, even a mild winter like this one, when the temps get up above 20, it feels balmy. I had to take a shower when I got back home, I was a mess. I love it!
I also enjoy the fact that it gets dark out by five in the evening. In the summertime, when the sun sets after nine, the days are long, fun and packed with activity, which is great but there’s a lot to be said for pouring a glass of wine, turning on the fireplace and popping in a movie at six in the evening.
Another thing I’m really enjoying this winter is basketball season. When the kids were little and involved in their own teams, I used to go to seven or eight games a week. Then of course, there was all the driving to and from practice. Winters were spent primarily in my car.
I love being an empty nester! Now I only have to think about Jay’s team and since I gave up away games nearly 20 years ago, I’m averaging about one game a week. It’s much more entertaining this way. Don’t get me wrong; I go because I enjoy it. Jay wouldn’t know or mind if I didn’t show up. The man is working, for heaven’s sake. But the team is on a roll and I like to watch them win.
I also like (love) being home by myself so I can watch whatever I want on the big screen without having to share. The slightly smaller screen on the porch has a better picture but sometimes I just like it BIG.
Last night, I finally got around to watching Kingsman; the secret service. I loved it! Samuel L. Jackson was really funny as a lisping megalomaniacal billionaire, saving the earth from humans. Colin Firth was fun as ever as a super spy and the kid who starred was perfect.
Interesting bit of movie trivia: Mark Hamill plays Professor Arnold, the first celebrity abducted by the bad guys. He’s old, fat and speaks with an English accent but I knew it was him because I just saw the new Star Wars movie. Kingsman is very loosely based on a graphic novel, in which the first celebrity abducted by the bad guys is…Mark Hamill!
It was sort of like Colin Firth playing Mr. Darcy in Bridget Jones Diary, where in the book, Bridget has a mad crush on Colin Firth.
The fight scenes in Kingsman were good, the plot was fun and I loved the fact that the bad guys were climate alarmists who decided that eliminating most of the human race was the only way to rescue the planet from the scourge that is humanity. Scratch the surface of an environmentalist, you usually find a culture of death worshipping human race hater.
And the delivery system of global destruction was free cell phones and wifi.
How great is that?
This week I also watched Mom’s Night Out, which was better than I thought it would be. It was cute, sweet and funny. It was no Spy, but it made me laugh.
I also watched A Little Chaos, wanting to see the last project of Alan Rickman’s. I’ve been a fan of his since Hans Gruber. He was never less than wonderful in anything he did.
A Little Chaos is set in the late seventeenth century, during the building of the gardens of Versailles. It’s a quiet little love story between gardeners. Kate Winslet plays a gal who becomes a landscape designer after her husband and daughter die. I don’t know how many career women there were back in 1690 but what the hell. My favorite scenes in the movie were one in which Kate runs into King Louis and mistakes him for a gardener and another when she is invited to the private ladies lounge during a meeting at court. There, she is asked about her family and when she reluctantly admits her only child died at the age of six, every single lady there speaks of the child or children they’ve lost. It’s a touching scene.
However, we then discover that Kate feels guilty over her the death of her family. They died in a carriage accident. Kate noticed the back wheel was wobbly as her husband and daughter drove away from home so naturally, she raced around the house and jumped out in front of the horses, causing them to swerve, lose control and tumble down the ravine, killing everyone inside.
Yeah, you read that right.
Who wouldn’t jump in front of a vehicle as it raced along the edge of a ravine because you think they might have a flat tire?
Sorry, Kate. That accident was totally on you.
Grandkids are here; gotta go.