Winter Idiot Warning

Here in my part of South Carolina we are experiencing a winter storm.  It isn't a surprise.  Our weather people have been warning us for a couple of days and my sinuses have been warning me for at least three.  Everything is closed, including my office, which hasn't happened since I've lived here.

So far there are about 7 fluffy inches of snow covering the ground at my house.  I understand it's ranging to about 10 inches in the counties next door.  The sleet and freezing rain are predicted to start soon and doubtless there will be power lines down.  It sometimes takes a couple of days to get power back once it's gone around here.  That's a drag since my house is one of those Gold Medallion Homes  where everything is run by electricity.  I have a fireplace, but previous owners put a cap on the chimney and bolted the flue shut so even if I had firewood, I couldn't use it.  But I have lots of quilts, soft Freudian slippers I got for Christmas, water, and enough food to get by for a good while.  I'm not too worried.

Coming from the reasonable North, it was difficult to understand how less than a couple of feet of snow could close anything down.  But I understood more when I watched the local news this morning.  A weather girl stood shivering in the street in her stylish, high healed boots, cute little hat and no gloves and explained that the State Police was asking people to stay off the roads.

The blue weather girl had to jump to safety when an SUV came twirling down the street toward her.  Ten or so minutes later she came back, this time with gloves.  The camera no longer showed her boots.  She was standing next to a building and held up a long handled ice scraper and explained to her audience what it was and what it was used for.  I shit you not, she actually did that. 

Then they showed the big highway.  One lane was packed and slushy from cars and big trucks sliding along.  Evidently, both of South Carolina's snow plows were busy in Columbia.  The weather girl read a notice from the State Police that explained about black ice and urged people to stay home.  The Police notice stated that it didn't matter if you had four wheel drive, an SUV or how many Confederate flags your vehicle is wearing, it's just not safe to drive it right now.

Then the weather girl interviewed a young father in his pickemup truck with three small children crammed in beside him - no seat belts, of course.  She asked him where they were going and he proudly told all the television audience that he and his children were going shopping for sleds.  I'm not making this stuff up!

So now I understand why 7 inches of snow puts us in a state of emergency.  It has much less to do with the snow and much more to do idiots. I understand tomorrow is supposed to be worse.  As I said, I've got enough provisions to get by if the electricity goes, but gosh I'd hate to miss the local weather in the morning!

Steaming for a Cuppa Joe

This morning I sat behind a "lady" in a green car as she sat texting away at a stop sign. I suppose I should have been happy that her right foot wasn't pushing on the accelerator while her right index finger was busy spelling out the latest chapter of her epic novel, but I was not the least joyful.  I hadn't had coffee yet and she should have assumed that there would be someone behind her who actually wanted to go somewhere.   After all, I was waiting to join about a gazillion other cars all heading in the general direction of my office and I was eager to look for the gap in the traffic that would allow me to get closer to work.  And coffee.

Someone had carelessly parked in my space at work.  My name isn't on the space, you understand, but everyone knows it's my space.  I like to park there.  It's usually available for me because I usually get there before anyone else, but today of course, I was running behind because some ridiculous person forgot to drive and trapped me for several prime minutes.  You'd think that who ever got to work before me would have had the decency to make coffee.  If you get the good parking place - the one at least four steps closer to the door, the least you can do is make coffee, don't you think?  But noooooo!  There was no coffee made. 

While driving to an other clinic some distracted, possibly brain injured person of questionable parentage who was probably a felon and not a nice person in the least got in front of my obviously important state vehicle and drove one mile per hour under the speed limit. 

Evidently the university is back in session, so the highway department decided to close some lanes here and there just to make things interesting.  There is a convenient  Starbucks on my way, but of course it was on the wrong side of the highway and with lane closures and thousands of people trying to deliver van loads of bookcases, laundry baskets and small appliances to their new apartments, the coffee was just a cruel tease.
 
You know how it goes when a lane is closed. There are signs: right lane ends 1000 feet. . . right lane ends 500 feet. . . right lane ends 14 feet. . . 12 feet, etc. It's not like it's a big surprise when the right lane ends. Yet one of 17 anal orifices behind the wheel will fly past you in the right lane and then sit there like a whipped puppy until someone lets them in. But not me. Not with that Starbucks disappearing like an oasis in my rear view mirror.
 
When I got back to my office the coffee pots had been washed clean.  It was late afternoon and I hesitated for a long minute before deciding to  make just a mug and a half.  And finally I enjoyed a well-deserved, long-overdue cuppa life-sustaining elixir.
 
A couple of sips later, while sitting in my office, my caffeine-fueled sanctuary,  Candy from down the hall stormed into my office. Usually she is as sweet as her name - suspiciously sweet, come to think of it.  But this afternoon she cut loose as only a flower of Southern womanhood in the depths of java withdrawal can do.
 
Yes, she dropped the D bomb with one hand on her hip, her head whipped dangerously side to side and a finger firmly pointed in the direction of my nose.  "Why did you think it was OK to make four ounces of coffee? Didn't you think someone else might want some damn coffee? And by the way, people who don't work should not be allowed to drive during rush hour when people who work regular hours are trying to get to work.  Don't you ever make coffee unless you make a whole pot! And they shouldn't be allowed to drive when people are trying to get back from lunch, either."
 
I just sat there quietly sipping one of the best mugs of the liquid bean I've ever had.  Some people!