My Sick Mind

That's what 24 hours of rain does to 24 inches of snow. Compare and contrast. Nature is goofy. She's ruined the last 2 weekends - one with snow and one with rain. That leaves locusts and famine. Wake me when it's over. I had an nice dinner at the local Chinese buffet on Christmas. A woman at the next table asked for chopsticks. I'm fascinated by the people who ask for chopsticks. The restaurant has plenty of forks and knives (and they're courteous enough to place them on your table) but they insist on wooden sticks. I think they're showing off for their friends, since I can't think of a practical answer as to why an American would choose to eat with two sticks instead of a utensil with stabbing capabilities and another that cuts. I'm also a little puzzled by the food. They offer pizza and French fries as part of the buffet. Who goes to a Chinese restaurant and eats pizza? Maybe Chinese people? Besides, the pizza isn't very good. It's probabl...

Charlie Brown : [Charlie Brown and Linus stop at a wall on their trip to the pond for ice skating] I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel. How are we supposed to feel? I had the TV news on tonight. On Christmas Eve, it's always the same 3 stories: 1) Christmas Eve mass at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, 2) NORAD supposedly following "Jolly Ole' Saint Nick" on his trek around the world and, 3) Last-minute holiday shoppers being kicked out of local malls because it's 6 o'clock and they should have thought about this stuff a month ago. The same old, same old. The other underlying theme of the local news is that "Christians everywhere are celebrating Christmas" as though Christians are the only people decorating trees and exchanging gifts on Friday. That's a load of crap. Mostly because to the media, the group of "Christians...

HARRISBURG, PA - Gov. Rendell yesterday upped the ante in his bid to balance the state budget, saying that without a table-games bill he would have to close the State Museum of Pennsylvania and some state parks in addition to laying off at least 1,000 more government employees. Rendell last week said layoffs of 1,000 more state workers were "imminent" if no gambling bill was on his desk by January 8. The bill - the final unresolved part of the state budget the governor signed in October after a 101-day impasse - would bring in $250 million in license fees and taxes that Rendell said is necessary to keep the government running. When government runs out of ways to find revenue they invariably turn to gambling. Something that was so abhorrent when times were good now suddenly becomes a panacea. Strange how desperation works, eh? So now the governor has held the threat of closing valuable state resources over the heads of the citizens if he doesn't get his gambling money....

This is Thor - full face. He's a little screwy, but lovable.

The snow is as high as an elephant's eye . Well, maybe. I've never really seen how high and elephant's eye is, so the hyperbole will have to do. Actually, it's about two feet , which is barely higher than my cat's eye. As times of the year go, I hate this one. The days are short, and in order to get anywhere, one needs to add 25% to whatever time frame one thought would suffice. That's because hoards of shoppers are clogging the roads fetching their nearly last-minute gift items from the local shopping malls. Our fragile infrastructure wasn't made for this nonsense. Tonight, for instance. The little town of Deptford was chock full of Urban Assault Vehicles (generally with one person inside) making a bee-line for the mall . My usual 40-minute ride home took more like an hour, partly because of the traffic and partly because I forgot what day it was . The snow-induced lost weekend manifested itself in a big rush to the stores on Monday night, lest lit...

Once I started driving my love affair with snow ended. It's nice to look at and it used to be fun to play in, but when it becomes work, that's where I stop enjoying it. Add to it the fact that it screwed with an entire weekend and it's on my short list of things I could do nicely without. It took over an hour to dig my car out of it's snow tomb this morning, after nearly 2 feet of snow (23.4 inches officially) fell Saturday and Saturday night. The silent killer. The good thing about condo living is that the sidewalks were cleaned early by a team of shovelers and snow blowers. They were out at 4:00am waking the neighbors and cleaning our stairways. The downside is that we don't have a garage, so the plow runs through the parking area and builds a nice wall of snow around us. It's kind of powdery and light, but there's still 2 feet of it, so the weight isn't much consolation. I dug a path wide enough to get my car out and parked it in one of the cleare...