Beige Sucks!

I miss the rain.  And the snow.  And the occasional thunderstorm.

There!  I said it!  I don't know whether you know it or not, but I come from a region of the Country with 4 distinct seasons.  They are:

     1.  Winter

     2.  Two weeks of Spring  

     3.  Summer

     4.  And then, two weeks of Fall.

And during that seemingly unending Winter portion, it can snow and blizzard and hail and dump untold tons of white ugliness upon us.  Freezing some of us to death and causing traffic delays for everybody.  Snow piled 8' high.  Black ice making the roads a skating rink.  And cars and trucks causing accidents galore.  Colder than a well digger's ass in the Klondike, it is!  

Then comes Spring!  Ahhhhh!  Birds chirping and bees buzzing.  Put the top down on the convertible.  That lasts about two weeks.

Then blazing hot Summers are upon us!  Hotter than a four peckered goat!  So hot you can't put the top down on the convertible!  

Then Fall!  Leaves a'falling and brisk evenings and roaring fireplaces!  Chopping wood and wearing sweaters and spending two weeks preparing for the Arctic blast.  Maybe two more top-down evenings.

And then whip out the skis!  And the Ugh boots.  And the snowshoes.  It's time for Winter again!  It snows like you wouldn't believe!  8, 10 inches, even a foot!  Cars sliding around, frostbite, people getting lost in the woods and freezing to death.  Some never to be seen again!  

But California?  Endless Summer.  

I have to admit the balmy Mediterranean climate brought me to Sunny Southern California.  I was "up to here" with Missouri's weather.  Four Summer evenings with the top down on your convertible does not make up for 300 awful days you must somehow survive.  And so I up and moved.  Just like that. And I've been here for 50 years.  And I'm now "up to here" with the sameness.  That awful boring sameness that spells a life in CA. 

And all the beige!  The sand is beige.  The roadsides are beige.  The bushes and vegetation are all beige.  They even paint their friggin' homes beige!  I'm SICK of beige!   

You wake up, it's nice outside.  You go to work, it's nice outside.  You go to bed, it's nice outside.  It's almost never not nice outside.  That's why I watch the Weather Channel to see how folks are fairing in the other parts of the Country.  Hurricanes and blizzards and heat waves.  Weather.  'Cause we don't got none of that 'round here.

I also must admit that I take some glee in the suffering of those caught up in blizzardy conditions.  I know, I know.  I should not take any sort of pleasure at others' misfortunes.  I don't even know how to spell shadenfreude!  But it helps to pass the time here in our balmy paradise.  Filled with beige.  Where everyday is perfect.

After all, we pay for it in our exhorbitant taxes.  The very highest taxeas in the entire Nation!  You pays your Federal income taxes and then pack up to another 14.4% on top of that!  Who knew we had a partner when we started our businesses?  But we plan for it.  We deserve it!  It's like a punishment for living such comfortable lives.  But that doesn't mean we don't get sick to death of it!

And yes, I'm prone to using exclamation points excessively.  It's a personal failing, and I'm in rehab.  They're trying to get me to use semicolons as a halfstep toward community reentry.  So there.

That's also why I'm putting together another Small Business.  There must be other transplants from places where they boast actual "weather," and who would like to experience some of that real weather for a day or two before they bite the dust.  Buffalo, NY.  And Chicago, IL.  And Philadelphia, PA.  And Kansas City, MO, my old stomping ground.  Folks who would like to see a rainstorm.  Or an ice storm.  Or a blizzard.  Or 130 degree Death Valley heat.  And who would be willing to pay a smal(ish) fee to do so. 

Like Salina, Kansas.  I actually lived there for a time.  I recall there was a month back in 1974 when the termperature didn't reach Zero for the entire month of January.  Ahhhhh! 

I'm calling it "Chuckmeister's Travel Service."  You can call upon us and get all the "weather" you want!  You'll get picked up by a motor coach, given a cup of plain old cheap, non Starbucks coffee, and transported to where there's snow.  Or rain.  Or freezing, Arctic temperatures.  Or miserable heat.  In short, where we from the Midwest call WEATHER!    

I'm still working out the kinks, but be advised we'll be launching real soon.  So make a list of all the weather you'd like to experience within a shorty bus ride and then d.m. me.  I'll add it to the list.  And in the meantime, just remember,

Beige sucks!