Winter Solstice, My Foot!

Just heard on the radio that winter begins today at 12:35 PM. Well, winter is a bit late to the game. We've been "enjoying" subzero and single-digit weather since the weekend. And now today is the day when it's supposed to warm up! Yeah, right.

I was down in Lansing last night to see a high school basketball game. Stopped off downtown for supper beforehand, and of course downtown Lansing has diagonal parking, and the sides of the street slope downwards toward the curb, and the entire street slopes downwards (the Mississippi is less than two blocks away). So when you're parked, the nose of your vehicle is pointed very distinctly downward. Anyhow, coming out after supper, I found that my parking spot was coated with ice. Trying to back up out of it, my rear wheels were just spinning on the ice.

So I put my Jeep in four-wheel drive, and just backed right on out. That is the kind of weather we've been having around here.

After the games (JV lost in a squeaker, varsity won) I was going out to my Jeep, which was parked across the street from the high school, when all of a sudden four deer came dashing through, between the cars and across the street. One deer leaped in the air between two cars, and you could hear a resounding thunk as its hoof clipped somebody's fender. What were those deer doing in town?! No sign of a jolly dude in a red suit, though. Not quite yet.