Friday, February 19, 2016

Friday funny

Haven't done one of these in a while.
Sorry about the jpeg merging onto the sidebar, but it was too small to read at original downloaded size.


Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Happy Monday on Tues.

The weather system that is passing through made for an interesting commute this morning.  If I didn't have so much work that  needed to be done by Friday, I would have stayed home today.  I haven't seen roads this slick in quite some time.  I hate freezing rain.  The areas where the roads had not been plowed were navigable, as the frozen crust gave some traction.  Where the roads had been plowed, all bets were off, because then the surface was simply wet ice.
My typical route out to the main roads has a steep hill with a stop sign and sharp right turn thru a one lane underpass at the bottom.  Of course, this being a "primary secondary" road, it had been plowed.   I decided near the top not to chance it and to turn around and go a different route.  As soon as my forward movement stopped, sideways movement began as I slid to the side of the road.  I managed to get turned around, thankful for 4 wheel drive and good tires.  Didn't have any issues after that, but caution was still needed.
As I got closer to work and traffic volume started to increase, I had a few moments of second guessing my decision to go to work.  The dichotomy of cautions/ fearful drivers and the aggressive, not-aware-of-anything-more-than-20'-in-front-of-them drivers don't mix well.  I'll take an empty, ice slicked road any day over that.  Regardless, made it to work successfully, albeit with an extra 45 minute drive time.  Glad I won't be out there later when the volume really picks up.  One of the main reasons I go to work at zero-dark-thirty.
We'll get to see what kind of flooding there will be this afternoon with mid 40's temps, predicted heavy rain and melting snow.

Getting old sucks.  I've been noticing the last year or so that I don't recover from a disrupted sleep schedule like I used to.
My wife and I went to a Christian concert Sunday evening with a bunch of friends.  It's called "Winterjam" and features 10 different bands.  It was enjoyable and they had just about every genre of music; rap, pop, bluegrass, headbanger/thrasher and rock.  Walking out of the arena, we were greeted with about 2 inches of snow and coming down heavy, so the trip home was a bit slow.  We got home around 2 a.m.  On a typical work day, I get up at 3:15.  I was pretty much wiped out most of the day Monday.  I'm thankful it was a holiday.
I've notice the same effect responding on fire dept. calls.  If I'm out a good portion of the night on a call, I'm toast most of the next day.  I used to be able to spend the night at the station, responding to calls throughout the night, get up and go to work and never have a problem.  Like I said, sucks getting old.