The weather was much nicer in 1994 but I’ll take this dreck over what I left behind any day! The biggest difference is that this bitter, dry cold crap will be done and gone within a couple days, unlikely to return until November at the worst. During my high school days in North Dakota, this would’ve been a heat wave as I would through 5-10 stretches of the temperature not even getting close to 0° C from November until March. I will never forget how crappy it had been in Central IL during my final days. Christmas 1993 was just painful. New Year’s was slightly better. A couple weeks before I left, it had snowed so much in the Northeast and Midwest, the telephone lines the national ATM network depended on, broke. People couldn’t get cash for several days as those devices were modem-driven and the Internet remained a theoretical matter as Quantum Computing is today.
Given what a mess the floor situation is becoming, I don’t get to reflect nor celebrate this anniversary. Not a big loss as Patton Oswalt stated when it comes to birthdays not divisible by 10 after you turn 21. The materials are in the garage, the driver thankfully used Apple Pay which allowed me to send him a $50 tip directly without his employers trying to get a piece of it. The Contractor now said Monday is the best he can do. Thanks to the weather, he doesn’t want his employees to get killed driving to my house. At this point, I’d rent a van to collect them and take them home every day if it helped.
Now I need to breathe and remember the great advice Adrian Belew gave us all at the One World Theater in late 2019…wait to worry. When I kick back for year 29, I will have a great ceramic floor. Easier to clean. Easier to maintain. Looks great. Raises the value of my house. My favorite perk, I can finally buy a robot to patrol for light cleaning/dusting and see which of the five cats will hitch a ride, becoming an Internet/TikTok star. It’s about time one of those fuzzballs earned a living to chip in.