[No one looks sexy walking on ice]

Does anyone besides my parents watch the Weather Channel’s programming? It’s delightfully insipid. It’s smalltalk about the weather all day, with some fun natural-disaster recaps thrown in every five hours or so. And why does the Weather Channel have the worst weatherpeople of any station? Shouldn’t the Weather Channel be the station for weatherpeople who have truly made it? There’s one guy on there from Jackson, Tenn., who must be the station’s resident comedian. I imagine he livens up the office parties with his meteorology jokes.

Anyway, I’m stuck in Murfreesboro because the roads to my parents’ house are pretty much un-travelable (isn’t there an actual word for this concept? impassible?), and I-40 is backed up and hazardous as a mo-fo. I’m actually not devastated that I’m stuck here tonight; I have Krissie’s painting to finish and some more gifts to wrap. I also really need to return some things to Hastings and Wal-Mart, but I’m not sure which will be a crazier time to do so: the day before xmas or the day after.

When I got home this evening, there was an awesome painted portrait of me on the entertainment center. In addition to being able to turn his girlfriend into a zombie at the drop of a bloody limb, Jimmy can paint. He uses old wallpaper from the Goodwill for canvas, and I don’t know where he got the wooden frame, but it’s perfect. Kristin gave me a ferret calendar the other day that’s full of pictures to gush over. But I’ll save that for the new year. I wonder if Jimbo and Kristin got something fun in the mail today from their neighbors (i.e. us).

Phil and all of his friends are festering with creativity. They all have such enormous talent at so many different things. The fact that they all come from Hardin County astounds me. I would give anything if they could find a project to all work together on that would blossom into something they could do comfortably for a living. Perhaps a horror-action-comedy cartoon about aliens?

Still no new baby, but I imagine we’ll have one within the next week. As soon as I can get a picture, you’ll see her.

Hope everyone has a nice holiday weekend. Try not to fall down in the ice, and if you do, look around really quickly to make sure no one saw you, even if you know someone did. Then go cry in the car.