A Hard Freeze

As I write this, a weather warning has been posted for my area about a possible Hard Freeze tonight with a possible Hard Freeze tomorrow night. To the folks up north, this means nothing other than -- It's winter, what do you expect?

But down here in the sunny South, we're not even sure what the weatherman means when he (or she) says that we're going to have a Hard Freeze.

So, I had to look it up. For my neighbors, that means temperatures below 25 degrees are possible for two hours or more tonight.

So what? some might ask. The "so what" is that this is the kind of freeze that destroys seasonal vegetation. Fortunately, I can't grow anything but silk plants, so this won't cause any major damage to my gardening efforts, but there are real crops out there that might suffer.

We get these so rarely that I'll probably have to look the term up again during the next Hard Freeze warning.

'Til then, I'm off to make sure that the heater is on after today's high of 72 degrees.

Dinner Conversation

Last night, the fam had dinner out. Before the food arrived, the five-year-old was drawing a picture on the back of her menu, when her dad asked a question.

Dad: "Will you draw me a Pegasus?"

FYO: "Yes, but I have to finish my drawing first."

Dad: "Do you even know what a Pegasus is?"

FYO: "It's a mythological creature with wings that looks like a pony."

Dad: " . . . "

Dad then turns to the seventh grader, and they launch into a conversation about federalism and the split of power between the federal and state governments.

What am I doing during all of this?

Making pretty patterns with the sugar and artificial sweetener packets.

Words to Live By

"A positive attitude may not solve all of your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."

-- Herm Albright

Words, Words, Words

Why doesn't "four" rhyme with "our" or "hour"?

Why don't we spell "seven" "s-e-a-v-e-n" so that it looks like "heaven"?

And, who the heck came up with the spelling for "eight"?

A New Year, A Year Older

I was born in a town so small that, even though I wasn't born on New Year's Day, I was the New Year's Baby. I have newspaper clippings to prove it. Somewhere. Okay, maybe I've seen the newspaper clippings, and could probably dig them up to show you, but am not positive where they are right now.

So, with each New Year, I get older too. Which means that I have something in common with Koreans -- I'm just a day late. They count themselves older with each New Year, and in fact, they count the time in the womb as one year, so a newborn baby is one year-old at birth. That means that a baby born on December 31st will be two years old on January 1st.

I'm not going to tell you how old I am, but if you ask my youngest child, she'll be glad to do so.

Happy New Year!