Current temperature outside: 2 degrees F.

Current temperature inside: 62 degrees F and falling.

Stupid, stupid furnace.

Update: The other Dave from my fabulous HVAC company came out and replaced that damn flame sensor. Heat now rising again. Cat no longer looking at me accusingly. Life is good.

It pains me to admit this, but the evil cable people may have a point. There's something, shall we say, undignified about standing on my tiptoes, leaning out the back porch window with a hairdryer and a paint scraper, trying to chisel a four-inch slab of ice off of my satellite dish so I can get my Daily Show fix.

This is a new problem, because I was too much a wimp to go up on the roof and take care of the gutters before the snow fell. The gutters are apparently clogged, so the ice is building up and dripping over. This leads to enormous icicles, and when the sun shines, they melt onto the dish, which then refreezes. I tried to see if the tenant could be conned onto going up on the roof to take care of it, but alas, he's not an idiot.

And now, of course, I'm feeling like I need to take a road trip. Knocking off Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee sounds nice just about now. Or maybe Texas and New Mexico....



create your own visited states map

This is my dad's visited world map:



create your own visited country map

He's bitter I won't let him include airport stopovers (he was traveling for business in the days of 707's when you had to refuel when you crossed the Pacific and such). Like he needs Fiji, Uganda and Egypt to make his map look more impressive.

UPDATE: I gloated in an e-mail to my dad that I'd visited Thailand and the Philippines, which he hadn't. His response:

I would have Philippines and Thailand if you let me include airports. Also, Fiji, Uganda, Cape Verde islands (a territory of Portugal), Abu Dabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Which, of course, makes me even more determined to make airport stopovers off-limits. And if he was going to use the Cape Verde Islands to claim Portugal, then I'm using Macau, which was a Portuguese territory when I was there. Harumph.

It's snowing here. Again. Right after I finished shoveling. I'm starting to get a bit bitter about this. Yeah, yeah, I know, we're just getting a couple of inches here, not like the 20 inches that got dumped on North Dakota, but still.

I was supposed to have my first Journalist's Boot Camp class last night, but it was canceled due to some sort of emergency for the instructor. This, and the fact that I didn't realize we wouldn't have class on President's Day, means the boot camp will overlap with my proofing gig by about four weeks. There will not be much sleeping in March.

To all my friends who have moved to LA and Florida, or other warm, balmy climes:

Shut up.

Now I'm going to go out and shovel.

Mutter mutter grumble harumph.