To the city ‘leadership’ of Louisville and surrounding communities –

Dear Sir and/or Madam,

I am writing this to you as a stranger in your strange land. I have lived among you for quite some time, and I have this to say, and I say it with all the love and respect I can muster:

Please, for the love of God, get a grip.

It is December. December is, as we say up north, a winter month.

During the winter, it is not normal for it to rain. Rain in December is never a good thing. Normal weather, during this most chilly part of the year, is for the rain to freeze into what experts call ‘snow’.

Snow, being heavier than air, will fall from the sky. If it’s big snow, it floats down. If small, it comes down quite quickly.

But down it shall come, and that is both normal and a good thing.

How could frozen water coming down and covering the county in a layer of confusing white stuff that cannot be smoked, snorted, or injected for fun and profit be a good thing, I hear you ask.

Well, children, snow, being translucent, masks both the sight and smell of your more… savory bits of real estate here in Indiucky. Think of it as clean frosting spread across the ‘cake’ of Louisville.

If managed properly, it is not a danger, and should bring feelings of whimsy and wonder to children of all ages. You don’t get snow often enough, and what you do get melts off in a few days, for you to get that North Dakota “If one more flake either falls from the sky or asks me if I think it’ll warm up this week, I’m going to lose my everloving mind and end up on the 11 o’clock news” feeling.

You should enjoy these brief, infrequent episodes of real winter weather, not use them an example of the pending apocalypse.

Yes, the expected 3 to 5 inches of snow will snarl traffic. I’ll even agree that making the 4 AM decision to close schools, should the roads be as bad as your feverish imaginations think they will be, is a prudent measure in furtherance of public safety.

But calling school at 8 PM the night before, when the first bits of geometric ice art haven’t even fallen, leads me to make this request.

How are our children to learn what anticipation is when they go to bed knowing that tomorrow they can sleep in? Their futures will be less productive if they do not master the skill of getting up at 5:30 AM to find out whether or not they have to trudge out into the frozen wastes to catch the bus or if they can sit at home, eat sugary cereal, and watch cartoons all day?

Please, get a grip. Do it for the children.

Author’s note – If it’s just barely too cold for it to properly rain, and frozen water falls from the sky as little hard pellets, that’s ice, and I fully support proactive decisions. With the state of your infrastructure, it’s quite likely that power will be out come the morn, bringing about the collapse of your society for at least a few hours. When we’re fending off the hordes drawn to such chaos, we will not have time to listen to the whacky morning radio programs to see if the little darlings need to pack up their schoolbags instead of reloading magazines and preparing field dressings.

Brothers and sisters, when you realize that you need a break from being in the house on a chilly December night, it’s a good idea to start up the old go-go machine and tool on down the road a bit. Just you, the road, and whatever audiobook or podcast you choose to indulge in.

It’s an even better idea to treat yourself with a milkshake. Something sweet and rich to pick up your spirits and bring back remedies of better times always helps.

However, should you find yourself in the situation where a few drops of said milkshake go down the wrong tube when you take a sip, just cough it out while you safely bring your vehicle to the side of the road and stop.

Do not fight it, causing your eyes to water. Because when your eyes water, your nose might start to run, just a little. And when your nose starts to run, just a little, you will sneeze.

And if you sneeze with a mouthful of vanilla milkshake when it’s dark and 31 degrees out and you’re going 45 miles an hour down a two-lane country road, it is a stone cold pain to clean off your steering wheel, dashboard, and windshield with four cheap napkins.

Yeah, good times. Good times.

How to get me to buy something from you – Be recommended by the person I’m buying a gift for in the first place.

How to get me to buy something from you twice – Get my order to me very quickly, have good product, and reasonable prices.

How to make me a lifelong customer – Give me a call after my second order, even through it’s your late afternoon/early evening, advising me that my chosen shipping method might not get my order to me by Christmas, then eat a chunk of the upgraded shipping so that this isn’t a problem.

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How to get me to stop donating to your charity – Send me, in the space of 30 minutes, two voicemails, three phone calls, and two texts, all with the same verbage about why you need money from me.

I like a nice reminder every so often, but using the spam firehose is not conducive to getting me to come across with a credit card.

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Well, my long vacation is probably officially over. I started onboarding at a new job on Monday. So far, so good.

It’s a semi-longterm contract, so I can’t totally take my eyes off finding something permanent. However, if it works out, it’ll be a good fit for quite some time.

Either way, my plans to retire as a reprobate have to be put on hold, at least for now.

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We woke up to find that the 2 to 4 inches of snow we were promised turned out to be 4 to 6 inches.

The puppy thought was just the most awesomest thing ever, and demonstrated this by running laps around the back yard for 30 to 45 minutes at a time throughout the day.

She’s currently laying on my office floor, snoring loudly. I guess she’s just all tuckered out.

The older dogs were not quite that excited. Sophie, Princess of Planet Dachshund, was downright unimpressed.

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Note to self – When shopping for a new desk to go with your new job, take measurements of your office and take the tape measure to the furniture store.

In other news, I’m going to be rearranging my office a bit. The new desk is L shaped, and the L juts out about seven feet. Nice and cozy, but definitely creates choke points in the middle of the room.