This reminds me of a moment in time while I was stationed in England.

I was watching the news on TV, and there was an article on some snow that had fallen in Southern California. The video showed an SUV coming to an intersection. The light was red. The brake lights on the SUV came on. The SUV continued moving with the same velocity and vector.

I grew up in Michigan, so this made me laugh harder than anything from that year.

It's global warming and Al Gore predicted it. The oceans have risen so much, they are overflowing their basins. You see the sloshing--as if you shook a wash basin--it only appears to come from the sky. Some creative types up in San Francisco say Mother Earth is herself crying. Maybe so. The sun is obscured by anthropogenic CO2 and cigarette smoke--which he said was a leading cause of GW. It will never end. Until the US buys all those carbon credits and sends $Trillions to every needy Socialist country. Which would be all of them.

A friend of mine was in the woods around New Year's with her husband. As usual, a group of us were staying there for several days to get away from L.A.

She is stubborn. She is an engineer. She was NOT going to park at the bottom of the hill like most of the rest of us. She was going to drive up the unpaved, unplowed road to the cabin. It was only 50 feet or so, but it meant a lot to her.

She put chains on her car. She tried. It didn't work. She tried again. She made four or five attempts in the Buick sedan or whatever it was she drove in those days.

My then-boyfriend (now my husband) is from Chicago. He had a Toyota hatchback back then, and he just drove up the hill. No chains required, of course.

My friend the engineer was furious, but what can one do?--experience sometimes counts for a good deal more than theory.

You've woken in Seattle. Panic is called for.

But did she try putting that Toyota into the trunk of her Deuce-and-a-Quarter* for better traction? It doesn't pay to go to one of those fair-weather engineering schools. I would have had that house down on the bottom of the hill in no time!

*Electra 225