Winter Weather

“Time for the weather report. It’s cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel.” -Diane Frovol and Andrew Schneider “Northern Exposure, Lost and Found” - I promised I would always report in the truth. The truth as I saw it (or felt it!), but the truth nonetheless.

It will be interesting to see how this winter season plays out as, not even mid-December, I have already seen more snow than I encountered the entire year last year. It has been below 20 degrees, some days even hitting the negative numbers (YIKES!!) for the past week. Holy smokes.

It has been COLD here lately, friends. C. O. L. D. !!! Since I am a wuss and was promised Boulder winters were not that brutal, I’ve maintained that my blog would be a refuge for the truth about this. Last year really wasn’t that bad, but so far this year has been a little more of a challenge.

Billy seems to feel differently. “No Sharpie, remember last year, it was like this! It was COLD for a short stint and then it was fine.”

Maybe he is right. I do remember and have always maintained that it is kind of cold for a couple weeks, but then it’s not so bad. And if memory serves, it was around this time last year, too. So…. perhaps we are getting our cold weather out of the way now?

It is also worthy of mention that the dry cold IS a different cold. Leanne picked me up for dinner the other night and it was 12 degrees. TWELVE DEGREES. I am the first to agree, it was cold, but it didn’t feel like what 12 degrees to me would feel like. It felt closer to what I know 40 degrees to be in Atlanta, or on the east coast. So, using that as the measure, it really isn’t THAT much worse…. the test this winter will be the amount of snow, and the longevity of “days like 40″.

Stay tuned.“The problem with the younger generation is that I’m no longer part of it,” Mark Twain once famously penned. Wow, can I relate.

Just when I thought I was catching up, they go out and invent an entirely new language. I am becoming more and more frustrated trying to decipher emails/notes and text messages from people. Some of my friends are quite proficient, but I’m conversational at best.

It’s quite demanding, so who can blame me for occasional mispronunciations? I said “IAE” at Laura Tingle and Erin Kummer’s pot luck dinner last night. Some of the young ‘uns reminded me that it’s supposed to be IAT (I am tired). Whatever. Until Mark and JZ arrived (we are the same age), I was by far the oldest person at the shin-dig. I scanned the houseful of people feeling like I was at a fraternity party. I leaned over to Tingle and said, “I feel like the house mother right now!”. As one of the guys walked by… he was, I don’t know, maybe 24 years old (?), I stopped him in his tracks to tease, “Hey handsome, think you’d be interested in a cougar?” Everyone around me laughed, including my young friend. I then took a swig of Geritol in liquid form in order to maintain my stamina at the frat party.

But I digress. Back to acronyms.

Here’s how it works in this updated world of “communication”: All dialog must be limited to 140 characters—the maximum length of a “Tweet”—and shorter is universally better. Any phrase that can be abbreviated, should be.

Here are some I’ve learned: 4COL (For crying out loud), CMSS (Cut me some slack). ^5 to that, right? (High five).

This whole thing got me thinking about some abbreviations we athletes might find handy. Here are some of my favorites:
BMP (Bring me pizza)
BMP STAT (Bring me pizza, immediately)
BBT (Bonking big time)
D@M12 (Died at mile 12)
NGU (Need GU)
NGU STAT (okay, you got this one)
And one of my most enthusiastic, PMUN! (Pick me up NOW!).

Soon enough the world of technology will make it possible for us to be devoid of in-person conversations entirely! How lovely. We’ll become entirely social phobic creatures incapable of functioning in a “live” scenario. Every conversation can exist in the vacuum of electronics.

All well. BMM STAT! (Bring me margaritas, immediately!)

Do you even need me to say anything? I didn’t think so.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 6:44 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.