“It’s a winter wonderland!” Herself sang as I flung open the bedroom door, growling like an elderly bear, a hitch in my gitalong after a night of imperfect sleep.
Son of a bitch. Right again. No wonder they pay her the big bucks.
Happily, neither of us has to take our chances on the Duke City streets this fine frosty morning. Herself continues to work from home in Year Two of the Plague, and I am a senior citizen on a fixed income who doesn’t have to do jack shit other than sit on his arse, bitching about this and that, while waiting for Uncle Sugar to give with the free money.
I’ve seen two fine auto crashes in the past two days. The first was on Tramway near Comanche; a Honda Element and some other vehicle came to grief in the southbound lanes as I was cycling northward on Sunday. The second ate up two northbound lanes on Juan Tabo near Lomas on Monday, as I was taking the Fearsome Furster in for an emissions check and re-registration.
The emissions tester was a man unhappy in his work, probably because he was freezing his nuts off in his tiny shed, which let the bitter southeastern wind roll in with each customer. Nevertheless, he and the State conspired to rob me of a couple hundy for the dubious privilege of courting death on the mean streets of the Land of Enchantment in a 16-year-old rice grinder, and then we were both in a bad mood.
I won’t take my brand-new sticker out for a spin today, thanks all the same. We have already established that my neighbors can’t keep the shiny side up on a sunny day, and I’ve just paid in advance for two years’ worth of happy motoring.
Anyway, it’s cold out there. Colder than a gut-shot bitch wolf dog with nine sucking pups pulling a number-four trap up a hill in the dead of winter in the middle of a snowstorm with a mouth full of porcupine quills. …
Mad Blog Media 
Great photo! I feel sorry for the wolf dog, tough life.
Pure luck. I snapped it seconds before the neighbor pulled out in his Mercury SUV and laid down his tracks in the fresh snow.
Same shit down here. The other side of life in the high country, heh?
Good for the trees. And the neighbors’ garden, which we benefit from. Shoveling is a pain, but hey, when you live in the desert all water is good water, amirite?
Yes sir! May I have some more sir?
My 40 mile commute through five fresh inches was slow, if uneventful. There will be 4-ish more by the time I go home. The authorities in Wisconsin are pretty nimble. Even the two lane country highways are passable.
By the way, aren’t we close to the midpoint twixt the solstice and the equinox? Next week? Gotta look forward to something.
I don’t miss driving in snow. Did way too much of that when we lived up at Weirdcliffe and I was still racing. Now I can stay inside, where it’s warm, and enjoy it through a closed window with a cup of tea.
I always enjoys your photos. That one has a great angle, and you have a gift for framing. Well done.
Thanks, matey. Digital photography was a godsend to shooters like me. The machinery does all the work. I just hold it and punch the button.
What an image of Lupine misery!
The horror … the horror. …
Nice picture, but that last paragraph is painful to read.
I had to go up to the Bomb Factory today to teach an in-person class in the Cone of Silence. Three inches of snow at the house in Fanta Se, so I shoveled the walk and swept off the cars. The trip up was uneventful, albeit a little slower than usual. I don’t fancy getting the Forester sideways, impaled on a guard rail, or upside-down at 70 mph and what little other traffic agreed on that point so we all dialed it back a notch or three on the snow-covered 84-285 and NM 502. Hope to get home in one piece as well.
Mr. Waits has a way with words, does he not? A weird way, but a way nonetheless.
From the same tune:
Well done keeping it down to a safe and sane 69 mph en route to Bombtowne.
Wow. That’s a fine cold descriptor. Although I think you forgot the frozen snot running off the end of her snout.
Fresh untracked snow. If only you had been out at say, 2 AM, you could have made a single track yourself before powered vehicles mess it all up. My neighbor caught me out riding once – Not visually but she made the deduction the next morning after seeing bike tracks in the snow going down the road, and their entry and exit into my driveway.
No snow out here on our plateau above the river. Rumor has it that we will get a few flakes sometime soon.
That and some “spittle crackling in the air” would have reached/exceeded Jack London quality!! 🙂
I thought of that too. More specifically, “To Build a Fire”. We read that in 7th grade, of course, in a bloody cold Buffalo, NY winter.
Click to access to-build-a-fire.pdf
Nice song and a good flick. The sun is out!
Watching Jimmy Cliff and thinking about Bob Marley made me consider the impossibiliy of the Jamiacan bobsled team. Yet they made a team and were able to compete.
“Critics were stunned when they finished in 14th place, ahead of the United States, Russia, Australia, and France. At the 2000 World Push in Monaco the team won the gold medal. … The two-man bobsled team qualified for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.”
If we put aside the bobsled results, Jamaica had big balls to try.
Well, in order to balance my last post there is news on a subject that we discussed, or cussed, on a previous post, former president pensions and perks. This might sour your mood, so read with caution.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-benefits-explai/explainer-why-trumps-post-presidency-perks-like-a-pension-and-office-are-safe-for-the-rest-of-his-life-idUSKBN29W238
Yeah, that had been my thinking on the topic. They had to impeach, convict, and remove before he left on his own to cut off the pension and bennies. I’m still hopeful that various state agencies will hound him into insolvency and/or an early grave. What sucks is he’ll be defending himself with our money.