This is getting old in a hurry

I am sorry but this post will have little to do with writing and a lot of gripes involved. Here we go: I have to say this is possibly the worst winter I have ever remembered. The weather has been one miserable storm after another with no breaks in sight. Even our "thaw" we were supposed to have this weekend only caused flooding and when it re-froze caused slick streets. Last night while coming home from my mother-in-laws (where we spent the previous night because, while we finally got power back after several days of staring at candles for entertainment our well has gone bad so we have no water) I saw several people in their cars slide off the road because of black ice. Black ice is ice that just looks like wet road. It is very dangerous because it looks so unsuspecting.

So my daughter doesn't have school again today. I have lost track of how many days they have called it this year on account of the weather. We don't have running water in our house (I am drinking my orange juice this morning from a throw-away cup and would do the same with my cereal if I had paper bowls to put it in.)

the only good news is that I have caught up on some of my reading. I read Sideshow P.I.-The Devil's Garden by Nathanial Lambert and Kevin Sweeney (which was awesome, more about that later) and I am halfway through Gary Pool's recollections of his Vietnam experience as an EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) Xuc May (Never Happen). It is a self-published book and has the grammatical errors of one but it is an interesting book that reads like he is sitting there telling you the stories in person (which he has, because he installed a central air conditioning unit in my last house). (I am going to give him a plug for it now, www.xucmay.com (no one will ever try to take that address from him) If you ever interested in reading a soldiers recollection of the military life (and maybe some ideas for your own writing, I have come up with several nightmare scenarios I could form a story around) I would recommend looking it up.

It amazes me how much reading you can get done when you have nothing else to do. I can't clean without water, I can't do dishes, wash laundry. Without power there was no internet, no television, no movies, no building things in the shop. I did get a little bit of writing done in my hopefully YA book I am calling Moonbow, at least until the battery died on my laptop. It makes one thankful for all of the modern conveniences that we take for granted every day. It also makes me wish that the sun put in more than half a day a week this year.