Weather Gone Mad

Last week - Tuesday if I'm not mistaken - the high here in Louisville was 71 degrees. Two days later the low temperature for the evening was in the low 20's. This past Monday evening there was a massive snowfall, several inches of accumulation and, this morning, freezing ice. The high tomorrow will be around 50. Now I know the oldest and most irritating thing in the world is to hear somebody bitch and moan about the weather, but damn it I'm sick of this. Either be hot or cold, but just be consistent. It's always been a joke around these parts that if you don't like the weather just wait a few days - it'll change. That joke has since been modified to 'wait a few minutes'. It's maddening. What I need is a nice, huge insular bubble in which I can live out my days, like Hef had back in Chicago during the golden years of Playboy. A massive enclave under my complete control, where the outside world is utterly irrelevant and terms like 'summer' and 'winter' are meaningless. Oh, I have my own house of course, but it's much too small for that purpose. I need leg room and architectural variety. Plus, a deluxe sauna with a jacuzzi that seats twenty Playmates would be nice too. But really, I've looked at other locales around the country for more suitable weather conditions and as you might expect, where there's really good weather there's also far too many people around to go with it, 'people' being very high up on the list of things I despise. Maine happens to be the least populated state in America. Surprise, surprise. Where there's 30-below winters and eighteen feet of snow there fewer folks around. Great. I'd consider Western Europe except I have no interest in living amidst so many bloodthirsty Islamic fanatics. I'd sooner move to Dubai than London at this point, but my fair skin balks at 120 degree mid-mornings. Plus, I just read where the Netherlands is getting rid of the Red Light District on top of everything else. Middle Eastern radicals in, bikini-clad damsels standing provocatively in windows out. So to hell with Europe.
For my money. global warming can't turn northern Canada into a springtime oasis fast enough.

Remembering...

It's hard to believe that five years have past since the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart and disintegrated over Texas, but today is indeed the anniversary of that tragic event. Perhaps because it was the second shuttle disaster (lacking, I guess, the shock of the new that was provided by Challenger in 1986), or maybe because it happened early on a Saturday morning, when fewer people are watching television, I've nevertheless always thought that it was a tragedy that faded from memory far quicker than most. Anyway, the names of the seven astronauts killed certainly deserve to be remembered today.

Rick Husband
Willie McCool
Michael Anderson
David Brown
Kalpana Chawla
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon.

God bless you all.