What a fricking mess!

This morning at 5:25 when I left for work, it was just starting to snow.  The front yard was mostly grass.  And, I had a boss.

4 hours later:

NOAA says we got 4 inches in two and one half hours.  At work, the lights went out at 7.  The big boss from corporate was there to let us know he was relieving our plant manager of duties.  Apparently he was happy with his in-house management but the out-of-house duties "weren't coming along as fast as we needed."  Which roughly translates to we haven't gotten that second customer, and he gets the blame.  Still, even with lights out and our cars buried, he wouldn't send us home until our production mgr called from our one customer saying, "the lights are flickering here, you may as well send them home." 

So at 8:00, we hit the parking lot.  I had an 8 inch drift in front of my car and 4 inches on it.  Trying to get out of our lot, we were hung up by some idiot who got stuck coming INTO our area.  Once he was free- and the dozen cars he had backed up got through- it was nasty but not OMG- yet.  Honest to God, there was some moron on a motorcycle two cars in front of me, and I was running my wipers full blast just to see!  Coliseum (AKA the main drag) was slow and slick but passable.  In front of the mall, both sets of traffic lights were down.  Washington Center (AKA the road to our apartment complex) was actually down to a lane and a half in many spots.  At Clinton, two cars were side-by-side at the light and when they took off, the one nearly fished into the passenger side of the other.  About halfway home, a car was dead in the street.  I couldn't find the turn in to the complex until basically I was in it.

Of course, Laurie had her adventure too.  She let Scrappy peek out the door to see the snow coming down, when a cat came out of nowhere.  She had to chase him down in her slippers.  Fortunately, Scrappy is a typical hound with ADHD, and thus forgot about the cat quickly... but also forgot about coming back in.  She said he was very busy sucking up afterwards.

So now everyone's safe at home, we're listening to people calling in to WOWO telling how bad it is, Scrappy made sure to suck up to me as well.  And I'm desperately hoping that they find a new plant manager with the same people skills our old one had.  And yes, I described my boss at my old job and said, "If you get an application from this man, THROW IT OUT!!!"

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Anyway, I figured up the countries we hadn't hit on our "(fill in the blank) wants..." game, so let's take one last trip down what everybody wants.

Most of todays contestants are from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and as usual there are a good deal of them that apparently don't want anything.  And Chad only gives you what Chad (formerly Ochocinco) Johnson wants.  And, of course, we have the "usual" wants:  Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru want One Direction; Chile also wants Bieber, and Paraguay also wants Coldplay.  There is hope, though, as Peru wants to KILL Bieber.  Ecuador wants its gold back, as does Venezuela, and South Sudan wants its oil back, Libya wants to trade its oil for gold, and Tonga only wants your money.  Panama and Morocco want to join the EU- or at least get on the Euro, and Egypt wants its treasures back.

Among the new requests:  Argentina wants the Pope to get them the Falkland Islands back; Bolivia wants Chile, or at least access to the ocean.  Well, if you hadn't started (and lost) that war with Chile in 1879 (see War of the Pacific), you'd still have access.  Colombia wants candy.  Costa Rica wants "that big time rush", but will settle for a rematch with the US of A soccer team.  Cuba wants to be a state; failing that, to have the embargo lifted and trade with the US of A; failing that, they want Gitmo back.  Hey, hasn't Obama taken care of that yet? 

Guatemala wants to legalize all drugs (you might wanna wait and see how it plays out in Colorado, guys); Haiti, another one of those geography challenged nations apparently, wants to join the African Union- oh, and to get rid of the UN and all that nasty food aid we send them; Peru wants to forget about suing oil conglomerate Repsol and just buy them; Venezuela wants the movie The Wolf Of Wall Street to pay up; Egypt wants to extradite Obama for war crimes (be my guest).  Libya, not surprisingly, is a bit confused- they want both democracy AND a Muslim leader and Shaira Law.  Sierra Leone wants British rule, while South Sudan wants independence (hey, you already got it!), as well as EU troops.  Morocco wants a consensus resolution on Syria (good luck with that).

Oh, and the US of A?  We want Mexican druglord "El Chapo" Guzman, Uganda's oil, and to swap tailban losers for hostage Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

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And 5 hours since leaving for work, we now have a hair under 8 inches of snow.  Hope your either missing this, or safe at home.