Ice Station Eegeebeegee

A rare heavy snowfall here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere put a serious crimp in the Colonel's sawdust production plans for this week. Where the felling of several large pine trees for conversion into lumber and sawdust was on the schedule, digging out from under six plus inches of snow was, by necessity, inserted. A couple of hours of shoveling snow off the drive pretty much wore the old man out.

About an hour into the snow removal exercise, the Colonel began to have a serious discussion with himself regarding the wisdom of the move from the flat, featureless, snowless, sandy shores of the Gulf Coast nearly four years ago.

"'Boring,' you said. 'Flat, sandy, muggy and buggy,' you complained. Well, you got you some excitement now didn't you knucklehead. Look at you, shoveling snow! You could be fishing in shirtsleeves right now. But, Nooo, you had to have some land with hills and dirt. Got down to any dirt, yet, through this glacier?"

"It's not a glacier," the Colonel countered to himself, "it's just six inches of snow. Quit your whinin' and keep shoveling. Man, you've gotten soft in your old age! Besides, you were always complainin' about dodgin' hurricanes down there in the Scumslime state."

"Yeah," the Colonel's whinin' alter ego sniffed, "no hurricanes up here, just TORNADOES and blizzards! You ain't showed enough sense to come in outa the rain since you were fifteen. Grow up, admit you were wrong, and move us somewhere WARM!"

"Shaddup!," the Colonel commanded. "Life is great here. Besides, the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere doesn't get snow like this but every twenty years or so..."

"Great. So you can look forward to doing this again when you're seventy-five. My, won't that be a hoot!"

Two hours into shovelling and sniveling, the Colonel had cleared about ten square feet of snow off of the drive, and paused to lean on his shovel for a short strategic planning session and eyelid light leak check. He was diverted from these important duties by a high-pitched squealing that signalled the spilling forth from the Big House of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda and the Hope of 21st Century Civilization, Dashes 1 and 2 (H21CC-1 & 2), wearing every piece of clothing in their closets.

The high-pitched squealing wasn't quite annoying enough to completely divert the Colonel from his strategic planning session and eyelid light leak check. The ice-encrusted H21CC-launched snowball in the Colonel's right ear completed that mission nicely.

The good news is that the temps are not expected to be above freezing for the next week, and this white stuff is gonna be blanketing the ground for several days to come.

Joy.