Leaping back to Winter

Short night.  Short posting.

This is hardly "out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Maybe it's out of the frying pan and into the walk-in freezer for me.

And, that's not quite a stretch.

When I arrived at Spokane Airport around 11 last night, all went well on gathering the suitcase and walking to the car.

The Jimmy had been sitting in the outside parking lot since Thursday.  Evidence of the weekend snowstorm surrounded the car and covered the wind shield.

I turned the heat up to high and scraped off the ice deposits.

Then I paid my $45 and headed home, wearing my buttoned up fleece and figuring that winter coat in the back seat would not be needed once the car heated up.

Well, about 45 miles later, I pulled over on the Rathdrum Prairie and put the winter coat on over the fleece.  The wind was blowing pretty fiercely out of the north.

The car heater NEVER did heat up.  Good time for it to go bad.

Nonetheless, I made it home on dry roads with a slightly frozen body.

This morning we're encountering a Leap Year winter storm.  

I'm figuring that Mother Nature planned to do this cuz she was busy at other things all winter and knew there would be an extra day to make up for what she did not inflict upon us earlier.

So, the big contrast from lunch in downtown Palm Desert to shivering at the Lovestead.

One more item:  former vice president Dan Quayle rode with us on our Dash-8 jet to Phoenix.

He was probably headed to a Romney celebration party.

I wanted to go up and thank him for the inspiration to my book entitled "Postcards from Potato (e) Land," but things were pretty tight on that full flight.

So, I just looked at him and noted that he is pretty cute and well-groomed. 

This morning, it's nice to be home near the warm fire.  I'll probably kick back today after chores and just enjoy this extra day, thinking about the wonderful memories of the past few days.

Happy Leap Year to All!