Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Fire trucks and ambulances were everywhere on my street last evening.  There was a “chimney fire” down the street…

Wait. Isn’t that where fires are supposed to be?  In chimneys?  Strange.  I thought that chimneys were designed for that.

At any rate.  At about 7:30 last night an ambulance got stuck on my street, near my house.  I went to help dig him out.

With lights akimbo down the street because someone decided to have a fire in their fireplace, I–along with a Jacksonville fire fighter in his pick up–was shoveling out Tyree and his truck, on the wrong end of tire chains throwing sparks in the street trying to get free of the effects from Snowtorius B.I.G.  Or so it has been called.

I absolutely LOVE bad weather.  I know I’m in the minority.  People at work and elsewhere bitch all the time about bad weather.  I can’t stand it.  Bad weather doesn’t happen often.  When it does, embrace it.  If it’s winter, I want snow.  I don’t want cold rain or nothing at all.  Double blizzards of 2010?  I was in Heaven.

About a decade ago I went out to Oklahoma City for a wedding.  And while we were there, there were tornado warnings and thunderstorms everywhere.  Listen, for the folks devastated by tornadoes, I am not minimalizing the horrificness of it.

But for someone who is going to be in Oklahoma City for a long weekend and loves bad weather, I was eating it up.  It’s all part of the experience.  Better enjoy it.  I thought.

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When I was little, I used to be a Weather Channel junkie.  When an impending thunderstorm was baring down on the Baltimore area, or God forbid, a winter storm?  I was glued to the tv.  Any media avenue talking about the storm?  I was tuned in.

One time, when our house was being built back in 1987 and we were living at my Aunt’s house, I watched the Weather Channel for an entire bag of potato chips.  I realized this when I reached down into the bag after three hours and nothing was left.

I never, EVER, had worse stomach pains than I did that night.  No joke.  Don’t eat an entire bag of potato chips ever.

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And so here we are. On the Sunday after the biggest snow storm in Baltimore’s history.  I went outside around 4pm yesterday to assist our awesome neighbor who did a preliminary snow blow of our sidewalk and driveway.  And there is another 6 inches on top of that now.

I wake up this morning.  Record snow amounts.  Record player spinning.

Sun is shining.  Inside your chimney?  Fuego.  And up on cripple creak it ain’t much better.  It’s almost like the night they drove old Dixie down.  Oh babe, I hate to go….

At about 5:55 the NFL will start to permeate the air.

There’s a fire on the mountain.  Or at least…in our chimney.

I hope the fire department doesn’t come to put it out.

The worse the weather….the more I enjoy it.

It is a tie that binds.