« January 8, 2007 | Main | January 15, 2007 »

January 14, 2007

Dick Goddard, Woolly Bears, and Does Mother Nature Want Me to Build a Snow Fort?

By: The Dude on the Right
Here in the Chicago area it's been a very mild winter, with one snow storm at the beginning of December and then pretty much nothing for almost a month and a half.  Hell, the weather has been warm enough that a lot of folks were able to go golfing here in  January, although getting a tan didn't seem to be an option.  But once again a storm seems to be upon us, although the weather folks still can't seem to pin exactly what is going to happen.  My Weather Channel forecast seems to be saying I will be getting two, maybe three inches of snow between now and Noon tomorrow, the local dudes seem to have me in a swath that will get between five to seven inches of snow, and I'm not sure what the Farmer's Almanac says for me since I haven't actually read one since I was about seventeen and my dad bought it.

With that, there's a part of me that likes the fact that even with all of our technology, even with all of our computer models, even with all of our experts, the weather still gives us uncertainty.

It makes me sort of remember when I was a kid growing up in Ohio.  As a kid, and because there wasn't cable TV yet, all we had was Dick Goddard to tell us what was going to happen.  Sure, there were probably some other dudes on some other channels, but Mr. Goddard always gave a breath of honesty to a weather forecast:  That as much as he could look at the way things were taking shape, Mother Nature has a mind of her own, and he had no way of totally reading her mind.  He also had the power of the Woolly Bear, a strange caterpillar that Vermillion, OH, has adopted as its own.  Anyway, as a youngin', we would hear about snow coming, but thanks to Mr. Goddard, there was always an uncertainty about how much snow was actually going to make it.  That led to one thing, and one thing only - going to bed knowing most likely we were going to have to go to school, but there was always that chance, that Mother Nature decided it would be better for us to stay home, build snowmen and snow forts, have snowball fights, make our parents drive us through the snow-covered streets to the great hill in Amherst, and thanks to Mother Nature, and not Dick Goddard, we got a snow day.

The fun thing to hear, a year or two ago when I was visiting my parents in Ohio, was that Mr. Goddard still knows that Mother Nature has her own mind, even as far as the computer modeling, the forecasting, the satelliting, have come in all of these years.  There he was, in front of the weather map, telling everyone in his viewing area that in the next twelve to twenty-four hours he couldn't tell them how much snow was coming.  There was a chance of anything from less than an inch to almost a foot of snow, depending on how the cold front moved, and in my head, I knew that he knew that Mother Nature still has her own thing in mind, even though I wouldn't go to bed dreaming of a snow day.

And so, with the winter weather that is supposed to come tonight, I wait again to see what Mother Nature has in mind for my Monday.  It's not nearly as exciting as when I was a kid, because there is nothing like a snow day when you are ten year's old and you can build a snow fort, but I would like to know if I can sleep in tomorrow, maybe pretend I was ten again and build a snow fort, or if I'm going to have to head out, in a measly inch or two of snow, and do some business consulting.  As I do every time I hear a snowstorm might be coming, since I was like five years old, I pray Mother Nature wants me to make a snow fort.  And that Dick Goddard (or now, in Chicago, it's Tom Skilling) just can't read Mom Nature's mind.

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 6:59 PM | Comments (0)

What's New? A Movie Review of "Alpha Dog."

For this movie review of "Alpha Dog," The Dude on the Right feels bad for Zack. Sure, he gets kidnapped, but Zack seems to be having the best couple of days ever for a fifteen-year-old. Then he ends up dead. The Dude, thinks the movie, though, is very good, and Justin Timberlake is great in his role.

Posted by Rightdude at 5:42 PM | Comments (0)