FROM SANDMAN TO SNOWMAN

I've avoided starting a blog for as long as I could.  I would die happy if I never saw another blog entry by some semi-illiterate who writes "to" instead of "too," "definately" for "definitely," "alot" to replace "a lot" and the increasingly-popular and ever-irritating phrase, "I'm looking for a dominate man" -- you want "dominate"?  Okay, subs, listen up: Turn off the computer, find a friggin' dictionary and learn the difference between a verb and an adjective and differentiate between "dominate" and "dominant"...you want a "dominate man"?  Here's an order: Always use Spell-Check.  

Clearly, I'm no longer taking the higher ground on not launching a blog.  I'm a writer and I can't resist.  To leave L.A. when it's 80 degrees and arrive at 3AM at O'Hare when the temperature is twenty-below with a forty miles-an-hour wind chill factor?  I'm thrust in "Survivor Chicago: The Ice Age" without much advance notice.  

The rental car had an odd brush-like thing in the back seat and I said to the rep, what IS that?  Giving my tell-tale tanning salon tint the once-over, he rolled his eyes and explained, You scrape the CAR with it, to remove the snow and ice...Ohhhhhh.  

I had selective amnesia about this sort of thing, since I spent the first 23 years of my life in Chicago but avoided trips here during winter.  Now, I wake up in the morning and never know what I'm going to get when I look out the front porch window...sun, rain, snow, sleet, ice, flurries, hail...the possibilities with Southern California weather are limited...sun, less sun, rain and grey skies...that's the patina of Los Angeles.  I opened an umbrella four times a year in Southern California.  In Chicago, it's all about the shovel.  I've traded the high-end treadmill for the humble shovel. I can't shake this cold but, who cares, my body fat is now down to 8%.

There are two men in the 'hood who have snow blowers.  When the snow piles up, one goes out with his blower (in West Hollywood, men are armed with hair blowers) and mows the snow on the sidewalks from one end of the block to the other.  The second guy comes out, later, when more snow falls, with the bigger blower, and he scoops the rest up in grand fashion. It's like a pissing contest, but better, because we all benefit. I told one of them, it's like "High Noon' with the two of you out there in the sun beneath the snow, staring each other down...and then blowing.  One with a big piece of equipment, the other with a smaller one, but he really knows how to use it. It's not just about horsepower, baby.

Sometimes I feel Chicago is a really good fit for me...and other times, I feel like Lisa Douglas on "Green Acres"...you know, "Oh, Olivah! Where is the electrisical?"  

The adventure continues.