Sometimes I fail to be prepared.

I like people that drive old pickup trucks...the rounded ones that are painted in a non-shiny paint (black looks gray, red looks rust, that type paint). One of the reasons for that is the truck itself...there's just so much simplicity to an old rounded truck. And the other is that I imagine that no one driving this type truck would run a woman down, hit her car and then attack her with a baseball bat. This is the story I heard today at work...about a place not so far from here (like 20 miles away, and equally small as we). I suppose it is expected that crazy lives everywhere, but here I expect it to be those fellas that walk into the country store buck-naked and hungover, or the old man who once tried to put his tongue down my dear friend Leslie's throat. I don't expect it to be that...a man with a bat. And they were unacquainted by all accounts. And she is in the hospital, while he was carted off by the law brigade of Willis.

I also like the threat of bad weather, not castastropic weather, but "warnings" about winter weather, big rain, or otherwise "this too shall pass" type weather for these parts. Here it is the complexity that works because all the doom and gloom actually makes a lot of people more joyful. They laugh and smile at work, imagining a snow day from yesteryear. They stand in the storefronts talking about past weather, and they seem to be happily gathering their things to set up for that "warm winter's nap" that we've all dreamt about for years. I like the threat because it brings good humor.

And although a dangerous snowstorm might run your car off the road, I'm pretty sure I've never heard of it beating you with a bat. So, I guess my vote in the world of threatening alternatives gets Mother Nature over Man today. And most days, really.