Cold

My posts keep getting later and later in the evening. I am a very busy guy, so you'll have to bear with me. I owe an apology to the fine folks at the National Weather Service and our collection of wacky TV weather readers for my remark the other day about their ability to forecast the weather. You may recall that I reported that they were forecasting rain, snow and bitter cold for our neck of the woods. By bitter cold, I mean about 25 F., which is about as cold as it gets here. It all relative isn't it, you don't see me telling you that 90 F. isn't hot in the summer do I? Sorry, I was having an argument with an imaginary reader. Anyway, we didn't have any appreciable rain, and no snow except at about 7000 feet in elevation, which is up in our mountains, during the three days of their forecast period. Plus, it wasn't very cold. It turns out that by rain and snow they really meant windy as heck. It is easy to mistake wind for precipitation, so I see how it could happen. They did get the really cold part correct, albeit several days late. We had about 3 days of temperatures in the 20s, with highs in the 50s. Cold enough for us to call it really cold. This brings me to a guy who knows all about the cold. I keep seeing this homeless guy sitting in front of the Circle K store that I sometimes stop at on the way to work. He is this old, old guy who sits on the cold concrete and leans against the window. He always speaks to me although I can't understand him. I think he is asking for some change. This morning I stopped and squatted down by him to see if I could understand him better. After we got past the spare change part of the conversation, he told me that the past three nights have been torture for him, because of the cold. He said some roofers threw tar on his sleeping bag and ruined it, so he had to spend the night walking from one convenience store to another and staying until they chased him off. Talk about your tough existence. We have shelters out the wazoo, but for some reason he passes on them. There was also a story on Yahoo today listing ten signs that it may be time to quit your job. Things like dreading Monday, having no career goals, shunning your coworkers, showing up late, being mad at work for no apparent reason, not seeing any value in your work besides the paycheck and bitching about or to your coworkers. Those are the ones I answered yes to. The three I answered no to were, using up your time off in the beginning of the year, being envious of the success of others and not doing your work. I answered no to the last three because I have too much discipline to squander valuable time off, I always have a plan for it. I have too much pride not to do what I get paid to do and I don't care how successful my coworkers are, because it doesn't change my life any. They weren't really about my specific job anyway. I have to say seven out of ten seems to be telling me something. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor