About 12 years ago, while working in the last machine shop to employ me, I messed up my right shoulder when a tool broke. Today, while working on my old Ford truck, I did something to aggravate that. Hurts like hell. Icy Hot, heating pad, OTC drugs and even a bag of dry rice my wife microwaved to put on it hasn’t helped.

This time of year always makes me think back to the winter of 1982, when Journey’s Escape was still the hottest cassette to have and I was in driver’s ed in high school. The piles of snow and ice remind me of a day when I was the only one of my driving group to show up for class so I got to drive for the entire period with Mr. Eby.

However, it isn’t the ’80s I’ve felt nostalgic for lately. For some reason, I keep thinking of the swinging ’70s. Not that I was swinging, of course. Well, I was, but it was on a swing set. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll just have little flashbacks to collecting Charlie’s Angels trading cards, playing board games with friends, discussing what the members of KISS looked like without their makeup, and riding bikes on a field we called The Trails that had a drainage ditch running through it and we’d made a motocross track on the place. Other than an occasional Facebook comment, I’m not in touch with a single friend from those days. Or high school. That’s sad.

In other news, I’ve been steaming along pretty well on Nadia’s Children, averaging just under 2,000 words per setting. I broke the 30,000 word barrier yesterday. Nothing on it today, though. Wow. It’s 2:07 a.m.

School was out for me yesterday and today. Completely stupid. They determined it was too cold. What that really means is that too many of our kids have parents who can’t properly dress their kids for a walk to school or for standing at the bus stop. Cancelling class because it’s too cold. That just blows my mind. It wasn’t even that cold. Temperatures have been in the 5 to 10 F range in the mornings. Yeah, the wind was blowing, but really? No school? And, of course, our school put zero snow days into the calendar, so we’ll have to make up these two days. And we could still very well get another real storm that might legitimately close school. When we get too soft, the barbarians will tear down the gates.