"How COLD is it??!!"

Well, here in Central Texas it's supposed to get to EIGHT DEGREES tonight. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!! We're just not prepared for that kind of cold here! I'm a Baby Boomer, and it's only gotten that low twice in my entire life!

Here in Texas we always ask "How cold did it get last night?" I'm not really sure why... When my parents used to go hunting in Colorado every fall their entire lives, they would laugh because, in whatever lodge/cabin they were staying in, they would ask this question, and the innkeeper would just say, "cold." They really didn't care because it was ALWAYS cold there in the winter.

Actually my dad was kind of obsessed with the weather, and had this huge weather predictor at his house, the ranch, and at our beach house. It measured precipitation, humidity, wind speed, and pretty much everything. In his retirement, every morning as he looked at the newspaper weather page, he would ask my mother to guess what was the coldest spot in the nation. She got pretty good in guessing over the years, since the towns were always one of three places. We all kind of humored him.

When I was growing up, my father was bigger than life, like John Wayne. And, according to my mother, he was tested as genius IQ, which I believe, because he was never wrong. I mean, seriously, he just was NEVER wrong. I learned never to bet him on things, because he always won. When he had a massive stroke at 46 years old, at first they said he wouldn't make it, but he somehow did. Then they said he would never walk again, but he dragged his paralyzed right side around, and refused a wheel chair. And he learned to talk again, and after about a year, he was STILL smarter than the rest of us on half his brain. Gosh, I wish I could've inherited his brains!

So.... Dad, I wish you were still here, so we could discuss how rare this arctic "Blue Norther" is, and then I could guess where the coldest spot in the nation is. Miss you....