I never liked building snowmen. Maybe because I never liked snow. And then there’s that cold thing, which as you may know, I don’t like at all! So, I don’t like building snowmen. I never really got into sledding or other wintertime activities either. If I’m going to play in the snow, I want it to be warm and sunny, you know, summer.
 
I did make a few snowmen when I was a kid—enough to learn how to do it anyway. But I much preferred watching other people make them—from inside! Still do. Yeah, I’m not much of a winter outdoorsman, I know.
 
Of course, after I had kids, making snowmen became part of my job. (That is in the job description for being a parent, I think). But even that was limited. My idea of a snowman was to make one and hope it would last all winter. That never happened; my kids would destroy them—on purpose, I think, just so I would have to build another one!
 
And now, I have grandchildren. For some reason they like snowmen. Yeah, they’re a little crazy. I think they take after their grandmother, at least in their affinity for snow and winter-related activities.
 
This past weekend, we had a couple inches of snow. One of my grandkids was at the house and I now have a snowman in my front yard. No, I didn’t build it. Lucky for me, my son was visiting for Christmas and he got the privilege of going outside, rolling snow around in the yard and stacking the balls on top of each other (and freezing). He’s a good uncle. Me, I never liked building snowmen! ~
 
Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook and paperback on iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.  Amazon Profile - www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

The trouble with winter is, well, there’s a long list of things, but number one is, it’s cold!
 
When I was sixteen, and still living with my parents, we lived in a small town in eastern Oregon. Winters get pretty cold in this town and this particular year was no exception. Well, I take that back, this was an exceptionally cold year.
 
It was the week after Christmas and I had gone to work overnight, cleaning the floors at a local grocery store. The temperature was already well below zero when we started the job but by the time we were done, about four in the morning, the thermometer had dropped to -42 degrees. If you’ve never experienced that, or even if you have, that is cold.
 
Being young, it wasn’t as traumatic as it would be now, but it was still cold. Too cold. I decided that perhaps I should move. Maybe go someplace new, someplace warmer. I wasn’t really serious because I did like the town. It just happened to be cold at the time.
 
Well, little did I know that my dad was already thinking of moving. The following winter found us in Wisconsin. Yeah, not exactly a place known for its moderate weather temperatures and tropical climate. It was like going from the frying pan right into the fire—in an antithesis sort of way!
 
Everyone told me it got cold there but being that the year before I had seen -42, I wasn’t too worried. Then, winter came, specifically, the week after Christmas. I was “privileged” to experience the bone-chilling temps of Wisconsin with the thermometer bottoming out at... -42, again. A lot of good that move did!
 
Since then, I have moved again. Haven’t seen anything close to -42 in quite a few years. It barely gets below zero here. Except, I’m older now. And at this age, zero feels a lot like -42. It’s cold! And that is the trouble with winter. ~
 
Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook and paperback on iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.  Amazon Profile - www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

So, my computer informed me that “whet” is not a word. Being that I like to argue, I informed my computer that it was wrong, that “whet” is indeed a word—half expecting it to tell me to use the word in a sentence. (Which is how this whole thing started, I think).
 
Instead, it asked if I would like to add it to my vocabulary. My vocabulary? Well, no, I thought, I would like the computer to add the word to its vocabulary, and perhaps stop trying to “help” me with its inadequate knowledge of the English language!
 
Of course, there was nowhere to type all of that so, I chose the only reasonable option and clicked, “Yes.”
 
Then, that got me started—searching for words the computer did not know. And I found quite a few of them, despite the fact that I’ve had this computer for several years and add words frequently. So, I’ve found a new way of wasting time, I suppose. But it’s actually kind of fun giving my computer vocabulary training. Linguistic drills, you might say. It’s like I’m teaching it to talk.
 
But then I got to wondering, why should I have to add words at all? This is a computer we’re talking about—a large computer at that, and text takes up relatively a small amount of space. So, why is it limited in the language department? Why leave out certain words? And who decided which words would be included—or excluded? Why discriminate? A computer should be all-inclusive, right? The point is, why not just add ALL the words from the dictionary? It’s not like that’s unfeasible, or beyond the realm of possibility; this is a computer, there’s plenty of room. But apparently, that’s my job.
 
But it’s okay. I can handle it. In fact, now that I’ve gotten started, I don’t seem to want to stop. I guess you could say this little incident just served to whet my appetite. ~
 
Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook and paperback on iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.  Amazon Profile - www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

At my job, I’m required to take one week of my vacation in the winter months. I doubt they could make that requirement stick if anyone were to challenge it because, as my attorney once told me, vacation time is accrued during the previous calendar year and once accrued, the time is rightfully the employee’s time to take—whenever the employee chooses. Barring some sort of emergency, a company can’t legally prevent an employee from taking earned vacation. Some, I’m sure, would argue differently.
 
I’ll probably never know which argument would prevail in court because while I love things of this nature—arguing and court cases—I don’t mind taking a vacation in the winter.
 
A winter vacation is one week that I may not have to drive in adverse weather like: freezing rain, ice, or snow—“may not” being the key phrase. That is always my plan but it seldom works out. Only once, actually. I continually pick the wrong week to take off. Since I have to choose my vacation time nearly a year in advance, I really have no way of knowing which week will be bad weather so I just pick one and hope that’s the week. And nearly every single time, all but once, I am wrong. The week before, or the week after, my vacation, will be the bad weather and instead of enjoying the fact that I do not have to drive 700 miles a day in it, there I am, slipping and sliding along down the highways.
 
This has been the pattern for the eighteen years I’ve been at my job. Yes, seventeen times out of eighteen tries, I’ve been wrong. That’s not a very good track record. Especially since where I live, we don’t have that much bad weather. You’d think the law of averages would kick in at some point and help me out, but no.
 
This year was no exception. I’m currently on vacation, and high temperatures are supposed to be in the fifties and even sixties, with no freezing temps at night. And no wintery mix of misery is in the forecast. But last week...
 
Last week was full of ice, freezing rain to be specific. And snow. Someday, I’d love to go back to work after my winter vacation and rub it in to the other drivers that I’d missed the bad weather. But after this long, I’m beginning to think it’s a lost cause. I just can’t seem to hit it right. Well, except that once.
 
But about that, the one time that I guessed right. That was the year I had plans to go on a trip with my wife to attend a meeting for her job. So, I got to drive with chains for hours through the same ice and snow as everyone else at my job. And down the same road. Maybe I should invest in a Farmer’s Almanac. ~
 
Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook and paperback on iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.  Amazon Profile - www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.