Welcome back, frozen faithful and all you others who are someplace where it’s nice and warm. This might be a bit of a short one today (you’ll understand that when I get to the second part of the “adversity” topic) but we have some ground to cover. Yes, it’s the middle of the afternoon and we haven’t gotten up to zero degrees yet. That’s not really adversity, I guess, but it’s certainly something that has an impact on what you do and where you do it. Tonight, we’ll be back down to -16 or lower again, but we have a rapid warm up scheduled for Friday into the weekend. We may hit 35 on Saturday, and compared to this deep-freeze that will seem balmy. You will, indeed, see Minnesotans running errands in shorts or light jackets.
It’s cold here this time of year. You know that going in. And it was a bit on the seriously chilly side a few nights ago when I went outside for some reason. I don’t remember now what took me out there. Some sort of errand? Whatever the reason, I walked out the door and over to the driveway, and I looked up. It was a cloudless winter night, and the stars were amazing. Billions of them. They’re like that on crystal-clear winter night. And as I stood there, looking up, a totally unexpected thought burst into my consciousness. “These are the same stars. That’s Orion. They’re all the same. It’s the same sky.”
No, not the Paintsville seen to the right. This photo was taken in Paintsville, Kentucky. Our house, though, is currently “paintsville” central, as professional painters have taken over to completely redo the lower level and the office. Paintsville, Kentucky, for the record, is a charming town in the coal-mining hills of eastern Kentucky, with a current population of somewhere around 4,000.
OK, I’m a day late but I’m not a dollar short. I’m 76-cents short, which is really odd for me because I so rarely use cash I actually don’t recall the last time I had coins in my pocket. Basically I use cash money for only a few things, almost all of which involve making sure a server, or room service person, or pizza delivery guy, gets the entire tip in spending money instead of having to get it from the boss after I added it to the bill. The way I figure it, if someone brings me my food, on time and with a smile, they deserve the best tip I can give them, and that involves cash. Other than that, I live my life with my debit card and good old American Express.