Oh. Hi!

Yes. I seem to have "pulled a Sheila" and taken an unusually long absence from Blogger. I've had plenty to talk about but haven't got on the computer much. In fact, it's been so long since I've used Facebook that I could use a refresher course! (Connie - I'll message you in "chat" sometime. I tried leaving a comment on your wall and it showed up on mine. Must be some new updated funk the Facebook folk have going on.)

So, in the last couple of weeks we finally got hit with a decent amount of snow. Not as much as Sheila and Sindee down in Nebraska, but it sounds like we've got an incoming blizzard currently scheduled for Tuesday...ish, so maybe we'll get dumped on then. Hopefully not, but maybe.

I don't know about NE, but it's been cold here! One of the drivers at Job1 said to me, "Chad, if it was any colder I'd be able to cut glass with my nipples!"

And yet, even with the snow and the cold temperature, I have a plant outside my front door that still has green leaves on the lower half and the hint of some purple on the last few shriveled flowers. I think it's an Aster, and I was really impressed that it's hung on so long... but now I just find it creepy that it hasn't gone dormant for the winter and I'm about ready to dump Round-Up on it and hack it all to hell with the rapier I have for my Renaissance Festival outfit! (Plus, it increased in size by at least 5 times over this summer - thereby blocking the sun from a couple other perennials that now most likely won't be paying a visit next spring. I look forward to transplanting it when the ground is no longer frozen.)

And of course, with the first large snowfall of the year, many elderly people who refuse to admit that they should no longer be driving decide to take their vehicles out and drive around. I think they fear they'll get snowed in like on "7 Brides for 7 Brothers" or something. And then they stop and stare at the weather related accidents which ironically are probably caused either by someone like them who shouldn't be driving in the first place or someone like me who has an underdeveloped sense of self preservation and is driving too fast for the current road conditions. At any rate, they ignore the fact that they are blocking the traffic behind them. (In this case...me. Oh, and the 2 fire trucks that have come up behind me while I was waiting for the old fart to move. I'm not a road-rage type person, but the thought of using my Buick to push his car out into the intersection did cross my mind.)

I don't know what the outcome was for this particular accident, but last Sunday I again came upon an accident before the emergency vehicles did. It was by Cottonwood on a divided highway with 2 lanes on each side and no intersection. Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder how two drivers who were most likely the only two cars on the road for a 5 mile stretch at 4:20 am in rural MN, on a snow-free road, managed to hit each other.

Turns out one of them came down the divided highway on the wrong side. Both drivers were killed.

It makes me wonder if I would have been paying close enough attention to avoid the accident if I'd been the car that met the errant driver. But that's a little more serious than I like to be, so I'll change subjects.

There's mouse shit on the engine of the Cadillac. I found it there just now. That's not the subject I'm changing to but I felt like sharing that with you. :)

Ok. Subject change.

A few weekends back, Todd went to his mom's and David stayed home.

Todd had a concert. His mom missed the concert...again...but was able to find time to go shopping with her mom in a town 40 miles away. (I'm used to stupid shit like this now, but it still annoys me.)

Then, the next day, both kids had their school conferences. I left work for a while because I knew the teachers would like to speak with me. (David is on the "A" honor roll. Todd needs to work on his organizational skills.) I'll come back to the conference part of this later.


When the conferences were done and I was back at work, I received a call from David. He told me that his mom had called them and that she had told Todd to check for lice because everyone up there had them. And yes, for the 4th time now since she moved to Wadena, I had to deal with lice that came from her place.

But whattayado? I took the night off from work, drove to Montevideo and bought the lice treatment stuff and laundry supplies, and cleaned.

I think I may have mentioned a time or two that I'm not a big fan of cleaning. I like having a clean house, I just don't like cleaning it.

Alas, there was cleaning that needed to be done. No way to avoid it. So my vacuum saw more use in a weeks time than it probably has for total combined time since I bought it last spring, and Todd had about 8 months worth of lice treatments crammed into a one week period.

The kicker to it all is that Satan didn't understand why I wouldn't let the kids go to her house the following weekend. (You'll like this.) She's the one with the lice and yet I'm the one left "scratching my head!"

So, rewinding back to the conference part I mentioned earlier...

Todd's English teacher is attractive. I told him I thought she was cute and asked if she was his favorite teacher. He just smiled. (She also has a habit of spinning her wedding ring while she's talking. I picked up on that for some reason.)

I talked a bit with David's science teacher and the student teacher from the class. It "sparked" an idea for a blog topic for sometime later when I'm not running a bunch of ideas together like some big run-on sentence that cute English teachers would surely be annoyed by.

I also talked with their band teacher. David is going on a marching band trip to Washington, D.C. this spring so I talked briefly with her about that and then I asked her if she had 3 part trumpet Christmas music that she could send me.

Sure enough, she did! So, Sheila - please have Moriah bring her trumpet home and hopefully I'll remember to bring our trumpets with us when we come down this year!

Oh! And I'd like you all to know that Val is not dead. (I start to worry after a couple of months. I think about calling after a couple more.) Anyway, she called tonight and she was in a Marshall's store somewhere out in CA doing some Christmas shopping.

I still need to do that. I haven't started yet. Maybe later today I might.

I need to get in the holiday spirit. I was thinking about writing a holiday poem to the ex but I'm struggling finding the words to make it fit the season.
Here's what I have so far.

If I had extra to give I'd wish you holiday cheer,
and I hope you pay your half of medical next year.
I wish you and the douchebag that lives in your basement
would merrily jump from Santa's sleigh and try for a faceplant.
And if all 4 people in your house have heads that itch
consider checking them for head lice, you stu...

Nope. I don't think it's going to happen. :)