WE, WHO ARE ABOUT TO FREEZE. . .

Twenty-seven freakin' degrees this morning -- geez, but it's cold!!! Cold enough to set me to laughing out loud when Al Gore starts babbling about "global warming" again. I live in the south and it's been colder than is usually normal this time of the year down here lately. I'm beginning to feel like I live in an ice bowl.

I am a warm weather person. I hate cold, I hate snow, I hate ice; in short, I despise all the miserable crap that comes with the winter months. Give me green grass, green trees, warm breezes and shirt-sleeve weather all year long and I'm in my element, functioning properly, running on all cylinders.

So, naturally, guess where I get to go, right off the bat this week? The Chicago area. Yep, up in the Frozen North, where Accuweather said it was snowing and would continue to pile the frozen white stuff up overnight. The temperature there, the last time I looked, was a balmy 18 degrees. I am not happy, but I will go; it's called "forced dispatch," which means that you go where dispatch sends you. Period. Like it or not. They changed my load over the weekend, which would have put me in the vicinity of our terminal on Tuesday. Instead, I get to travel even further north.

I'm not forgetting to wear my boots this week. I absent-mindedly went out in my regular shoes last week. I did go to our yard then and found that it had snowed there recently. I spent an interesting fifteen minutes skating and sliding around on a patch of ice, trying to unhook my trailer, so I could bobtail over to the tractor parking area and catch some sleep. Every time I tried to pull out the release on the fifth wheel of my tractor, I slid forward on the ice and went crashing into the side of the trailer. After French-kissing it four or five times, I finally managed to get braced sufficiently so that I could yank the release all the way out. The soles of those shoes are made for dry pavement, not ice, as I quickly learned, so they'll sit this week out at home and I'll don some more suitable footwear. Once again, I have to reluctantly prepare for (ugh!) winter operations. Against my better judgement, let me tell you!

And now, with the frosty weather down here (but no snow, so far), there's not much to look forward to when I eventually do head back south again. You just go from "Colder" mode back to the regular "Cold" setting. The Democrats won the election, so now they've turned down earth's hidden thermostat, to offset the global warming they're all so worried about. At least that's my theory. Hey!! Turn it back up!! I'm paying my "rent" (taxes)!!! I'd LOVE to have some global warming right about now. Heck, I'd even settle for regional warming!

With that thought, I leave you readers for another week, while I go play Eskimo for awhile.