Not much of a snow, but we'll take it. Good for the May flowers, don't you know.
It snowed last night. I know this for a fact because (a) there was snow on the ground this morning, and (2) I was out walking around in it at 1:30 a.m. with a big black flashlight, looking for the bogeyman.
A neighbor happened to be awake and heard a sound she didn’t like, so she rang us up and out I went in my Ten Thousand Waves kimono and a pair of Teva sandals. I left the .357 Magnum hand cannon indoors because there hadn’t been any reports of any terrorist Muslim floorboards lurking in the neighborhood and a 10-inch Mag-Lite makes a pretty good blackjack.
Anyway, I took a quick look around and didn’t see anything, not even an Easter bunny freezing his eggs off. So back inside and to bed I went, and this morning I see Philippe Gilbert is enjoying a very happy Easter indeed. Go thou and do likewise.
Mad Blog Media 
April 24, 2011 at 1:22 pm |
Happy Vernal Equinox (I think that’s right) to all who know there’s been a celebration around this time of year long before monotheism got its nasty hold on much of the world. What we’re celebrating in Iowa I’m not sure as the weather STILL sucks! Today’s local paper headline was something about how merciful gawd spared the folks lives in the recent local tornadoes. I wonder why he didn’t just send the tornado (assuming he/she HAD to send one, which is another question) through some scrubby cornfield instead of tearing up most of the town? Seems THAT would have been more merciful, but what do I know? I’m just a pagan.
Phil Gilbert delivered a nice easter spanking to lil’ Frandy Schleck this afternoon in L-B-L. As the three of them headed ever closer to the finish, I kept saying “two against one, how can the Schleck’s blow this? Just wait, they’ll demonstrate!” Shimano needs to figure out a way for these boyz to pedal with their jaws…they’d wipe the floor with Gilbert if they could do that! But in the legs + brains department this team is lacking. They’re in danger of looking as much “all hype, no results” as the big-spending Sky Team. Maybe it’s the fancy cars — last team I can remember with fancy Mercedes or Jaguar team cars that won anything was way back in the Banesto days with BigMig.
April 25, 2011 at 6:39 pm |
Talk about falling into a barrel of tits and coming out sucking your thumb — the Schlecks may climb like bottle rockets but they ain’t exactly smart bombs, are they?
April 24, 2011 at 6:44 pm |
Those D cell Maglites can do some serious damage. Once watched a parking lot attendant take out the windshield of a VW that jumped the curb to skip paying.
April 25, 2011 at 6:44 pm |
Ben, folks tend to forget in this era of Tasers, 30-round clips and various martial arts that our ancestors mostly used to hit the beasties and each other with big ol’ sticks. It still works today.
Clocking some night-crawling crackhead with a MagLite makes a lot less racket than letting fly with a 158-grain semi-jacketed hollow point out of a 4-inch pipe (though I do love me the big blue flame that jumps out of that thing at night). Plus the likelihood of collateral damage is greatly reduced. Can’t be winging the neighbors. I like most of them.
April 24, 2011 at 8:25 pm |
That Maglite was my only legal weapon of choice when I was working my way though college at the U of Rochester as a night watchman. That Maglite could be pretty lethal. To back it up, I was working out and doing a couple hundred pushups a day.
The rule at Security and Traffic was that if you got caught on duty with a shootin’ iron you would likely get fired. After all, no one in the President’s Office wanted some rich guy’s son getting caught between the eyes with a FMJ round while doing something stupid. It was all about class. Fuckin’ A.
A couple buddies of mine, fellow working class stiffs, were packing serious heat, but I didn’t go that far. I had a degree to get and tuition to pay. If push came to shove, that old phrase comes to mind: When the going got rough, I got going.
April 25, 2011 at 6:53 pm |
K, I don’t remember what the guards at UNC were packing, if anything. Hell, we may not have had any, because in Greeley in the Seventies shooting hippies was considered a blend of pest control and urban renewal. It was the locals’ civic duty.
As long as we stayed in our own houses, in a few local taverns or on campus we got away with murder, though. You could major in Acting the Fool with a minor in Who Me?
April 25, 2011 at 9:11 am |
The pipe cleaner brothers just don’t have the power to finish this type of race. I saw a bubble caption on another site with Gilbert looking back and saying “thanks for the lead out, bitches”. Those may have been his actual words, not just what he was thinking. I’m sure the boys are still pouting….
April 25, 2011 at 11:32 am |
Larry T. — The vernal equinox was back in late March — this is supposedly springtime!
April 25, 2011 at 2:54 pm |
So just what the hell WERE we celebrating this weekend? There were parties going on way before this Jesus fellow came around. I thought the monotheistic religions just jumped on the bandwagon, as they did with the parties around December 25. As to springtime, it’s not here in western Iowa yet, I’m starting to think the recent tornadoes blew us over to the Pacific Northwest somehow! But less than three weeks to go before we’re outta here!
April 25, 2011 at 6:55 pm |
I dunno about you, Larry, but I was celebrating eggs. And bacon. And potatoes. My personal holy trinity.
It’s spring here, though. I can tell because it’s alternating among sunshine, rain and snow. We get sun for a few minutes, then it rains for a bit, and finally it snows a touch. Repeat as necessary to drive the Mad Dog even madder.
The lawn and trees like it, though.
April 26, 2011 at 7:16 am |
Larry T. — The date of Easter is related to the vernal equinox, but it isn’t actually the same — it always occurs sometime after the equinox, and can occur as late as April 25.
If you have far too much time on your hands, you can find the wacky rules for the date of Easter here:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.php
Since I was raised as a “fallen-away Unitarian”, I usually don’t pay much heed to this stuff, but I do like astronomy.