As you may have noticed, I have not posted a new rant in more than a week. It just has not been a good time for rants, it seems. The impeachment thing is still in limbo. The NBA lockout is still on hold and I have been thinking about ranting on that. But it just hasn't happened yet. And then there is my personal life... what there is of it. Which brings me to this posting. As a service to you, dear web surfer, I thought I would illustrate the depths to which I have no life. And to do that, I shall tell you about my day.

I had set my clock for 7 a.m. I have not snapped any L&C shots in about a month, so I thought I would walk the tracks the mile and a half up to the Grace Water Treatment Plant. If I was lucky, I thought the train may work the spur there as it did when I was there in early November, allowing some of my best train shots in the year or more since I have been taking them.

So when the clock went off, I hopped up, cut it off, ran to the bathroom... then came back, crawled back into bed and fell quickly back to sleep. And woke up at a little after ten. This time, I stopped by my computer before the bathroom to log on and check my e-mail. I knew there would be one e each from my two sisters, but, of course, I was hoping for one from someone else. Her, in other words. Alas, there was no e-mail from Her.

Replied to my sisters' e-mails as I logged into my chat room, #CafeNothing, and began making french fries as some sort of single man brunch. Nothing was doing in the cafe so I caught up on what was happening in the George Seifert/Carolina Panthers thing on ESPNews. (At the time, there was no news on it yet.)

Took a quick bath, checked snail mail, then got my backpack and headed out into the great wide open. Which, as it turned out, was not a very good idea. See, it's so cold here, that after a few minutes out in the shit, I actually heard my balls freeze up and shrivel up into my body. But hell, I had a book due at the library, so off I went.

On the way down Highway 9, I allowed myself to think some about a story I am trying to flesh out. Then I thought about how damn cold it was. And that was pretty much what I thought about until I reached my dad's house. I had not seen him in almost a week. As it turned out, he was working today. So I hitched a ride with my step-mother up to the library where I returned two books (both on dating and relationships; obviously I was reaching when I checked these bad boys out a few weeks ago) and checked out Stanley I. Kutler's Abuse Of Power: The Richard Nixon Tapes as well as some old copies of The Washington Monthly.

After that, I hopped on the Norfolk-Southern tracks and walked the short distance to Builders Supply. Or more specifically, to what is next to Builders Supply, the Lancaster and Chester Railway Engine House. EMD SW1200 #94 was out and idling, but nothing else was doing, so I walked on down to K-Mart. I had to pick up an audio cassette head cleaner and was going to look at "The Faculty" soundtrack on CD.

After that, I was so damn cold, that I decided to head on back home. As I was walking through the K-Mart parking lot, I saw a bumper sticker on an old beat up 1970s-era station wagon: "Kids Can't Be Beaten--Don't." Well, no fucking duh! Do we really need bumper stickers to tell us how to live? Hey, if you have an honor student at Robert F. Kennedy High School, then by all means, put a god damned sticker on the back of your mini-van. If you really love a certain college team, go ahead. Put that sticker there too. But don't tell me how to live! Is anyone really going to see that sticker and suddenly realize how he/she has been so wrong for so long? Of course, the Jesus stickers are worse. But they're no where near as bad as the Jesus fish emblems on the back of every other Volvo station wagons out there. If you want to lead people to God, my advice to you is to do that by the example you set in your life. Leave the back of your car to tell me how good your kids are or who is number one this week.

By this time, I was pissed off to the point that the cold didn't seem to bother me as much. At least for about five minutes. That was when I began questioning not when I would die, but how far of the three miles to my apartment I would make it before falling over. See. Not only was it cold as hell today (or Minnesota, take your pick) but it was also windy. And I was also walking uphill. So for the next little while, I didn't do a lot of thinking. (Allow me to pause here long enough to explain why I don't have a car. A few years ago, I had a wife and a car. Then the wife left in the car. Damn, I miss that car.)

Soon, I began to think of what new and interesting things I could add to my L&C web site. And then I began thinking of the story again. And then I began to think that I really need some damn gloves. And then I began to think of Her. But I've already written those rants.

When I got back to the apartment, I cleaned my cassette heads, got updated on the George Seifert/Carolina Panthers situation and heard the following joke on John Hancock's 1110 WBT-AM radio show: "Microsoft announced today that the release date of the new operating system, Windows 2000, would be pushed back to the first quarter of 1901."

It is now 5:38 p.m. George Seifert has been named coach of the Panthers, no news on the NBA lockout and no new e-mail from Her. Life goes on. Slowly.
 
 

Joseph C. Hinson
 
 

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