Quiero Volver a La Cuba Mia

I'm SO happy that this is my last winter in the Willamette Vally - home of Salem Oregon, the city of 200,000 that has exactly 3 snowplows. Not like they'd help today anyways. When I was little, we got snow every year, maybe like 2 to 6 inches about 3 times each winter. Then every 3 or 4 years we'd get a good foot of snow. So, there were like 5 years when we didn't really get any snow in the valley, so apparently the ODOT geniuses decided to sell 7 snowplows to Northern California. (Go figure.) Last year, the MAIN street bt my house didn't get plowed until about 5pm the first day of snow. And we had a big one last year - 18 inches, then came the freezing rain. Let me tell all you who live in the MidWest or somewhere where it snows a lot - you think that we're wimps, but you have NO idea what it's like to try and do anything in 3 inches of ice on top of a foot or so of snow. (by the way, I'm not mad or anything, my sarcasm just doesn't show through so much in writing! :-) )

So, today I got up at 4:30 - you gotta love working early on saturdays! - and the car was covered in freezing rain. My dad took me to work, and it never really did thaw out, but at least the streets weren't too slick.

So going back to when I said that Salem sold 7 snow plows to NorCal....... I have an interesting story that kind of relates to that. My last winter in Redding, my floor decided to go up to the mountains to play in the snow. I was the only one (out of like 10 of us!!) who had ever driven in the snow, but I didn't drive 'cuz I know how well my front-heavy back-wheel-drive car handles in the snow. Anyhow, it got to snowing really hard, so we thought we'd better go back to school. One of our cars slid of the road into a little snowbank (the kind that the plows make). The back end was in the snowbank, and the front end was sticking out and blockng the west-bound lane. The car wasn't damaged, but we couldn't get it unstuck. Thankfully, this 4X truck came by with some kind of chain and offered to try to pull us out. While we were in the process of attempting to move the car, a snowplow came down the mountain. The driver motioned for me to come over to the plow. He said, "ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to mave that car." (referring to the stuck car.) I told him we were trying to move it, and turned to go back to help. He yelled after me, "I have to get this plow throughand you're blocking the highway, so you need to move that car NOW!" I nicely replaied, "We have been trying to move the car for the past 10 minutes, so if you want it moved right this instant, you go move it!!" I don't know, I just thought it was hideous that he actually thought we could just move the car on command.

Anyhow, next year at this time, I'll probably still be cold, but lows of 40 degrees (highs of 70ish) with no heat in the house sound a lot better now that freezing rain! :-)

I'm off to watch Sabado Gigante...... like any good latino does this time on Saturday nite!