It may be sunny but it's only 37 chilly degrees!
At the risk of beating a dead horse (sorry PETA), I feel compelled to tell you that Flagstaff, Arizona has recorded just shy of 58 inches of snow this month.
That's only 23 days into the New Year and it's already the fourth most snow ever recorded in a January and third place is within reach.
I was provoked by opening the blinds this morning and discovering that there was a fresh dusting, and it was only a dusting, of snow on the ground around my home.
Now we don't get anywhere near the snowfall that Flagstaff does because the elevation here is right around 5,000 feet and Flagstaff is almost 2,000 feet higher.
It is considered a mountain town but it's only about 140 miles north of Phoenix, which is considered to be in the desert.
And Phoenix is where one finds the cactus and the extremely high temperatures of summer through several months of the year.
Now I live in Prescott Valley about halfway between the two cities, even though our elevation is closer to Flagstaff than it is to Phoenix.
So we get views like this from the edge of town.
To those of you who expressed concern about my eye surgery yesterday, rest assured that I am, indeed, alive and well after the grueling episode.
Actually I exaggerate.
It wasn't grueling at all except for a few seconds when the fancy, dancy laser beam was repairing one end of my retinal tear and came close to a nerve.
But the rest of the roughly 10 minute procedure was a breeze.
Isn't this fun?
Just living through the week, counting the seconds, minutes, hours, days and nights until you can open up my blog and learn that IT'S FRIDAY AGAIN!!!
Well, it sure is for me.
Fun, that is.
As well as Friday.
I suppose I could begin each one of these weekly forays into funniness by just saying TGIF and launching the cartoons.
But that's not my way.
I like to amble aimlessly into the arcade of amusement.
Keeping you all in suspense for a bit
Before I say the magic words.
No, not "Shazam" or "Abracadabra" or "Presto".
No, the words "HIT IT!"
Oh, the elves have been busy this week, filling my Humor Archives to a gut-busting level.
One of the most active is a long-time friend, known here only as Wacky Wally.
Earlier in the week he informed us of an odds on day far in the future.
Today, he has offered up another sly observation.
An oddball observation, some might say.
But let's say no more about it.
Let's just show you what his curious mind has found.
This post is for those of you who may have added on some years.
In other words, you who have grown older
I have found that it seems thast the older I get the less healthy I become.
I can't decide if that's just a natural progression or an accumulation of illness brought about by the past sins I committed and challenges I foisted on my poor body.
But I know as I've aged it seems I have more and more doctors and more and more visits to keep up with.
When the people in my cardiology office tell me I've got 7 or 8 or 9 years until my Pacemaker's battery will run down and I'll need to have the device changed I think (and sometimes say) "Do you people know how old I am?"
What makes them think I'll live that long?
But I don't want to put you in a dark mood as the sun is finally shining in my town today.
So let me share something another one of my hard-working elves, Comical Carol, provided to me this morning.
It plays on ANOTHER problem with Modern Day (Witchcraft) Medicine.
One of my chief elves, Wonderful Wacky Wally has been probing the internet again and came up with this wonderfully wacky factoid that seems just right for today.
Just a couple of notes here to try to convince you that not every Arizonan thinks poorly of Martin Luther King Jr.
Back in the late 1960's I attended a convention in Chicago of the Radio-Television News Directors' Association (as it was known then.)
At one event after a luncheon, the speakers were the former President of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower, and Reverend King, following each other.
Ike was not very good, as he read from his prepared notes through spectacles, and stumbled frequently.
King was next and he first apologized to the crowd because he "had forgotten his speech in his hotel room".
Like, who believed that, right?
He then spoke extemporaneously for some time, without referring to notes and without any of the "ers" and "uhs" we had heard from the previous speaker.
I know he was a preacher but his "performance" that day stunned me with his eloquence.
My other note concerns a day perhaps 25 years later when I was preparing to move from Mexico to Austin, Texas.
I had friends I had made in Mexico who had preceded me in making that move and when I entered town I called their number for directions in finding them.
Jordy, my friend, told me to "just come up the freeway and get off at the MLK."
"The what?", I asked.
The voice on the other end of the phone chuckled and said "The Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard but everyone up here just calls it the MLK."
So those are my remembrances of Reverend King.
I probably would have heard him speak again in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, which I attended as a young-ish newsman.
But he was assassinated about 4 months before.
SWMBO is proud of her ability to peel a Mandarin in one piece and she's taught me how to do it.
But today she got into a bag of apples and had to show me the results of her artistry.
There are two small lakes in the center of my town, close to where we live now.
So we drive down and visit the abundant and varied waterfowl.
I think the larger birds in the front of the above photo are geese but I'm no Audubon so I can't be sure.
This guy, in his dress-up white suit surely must be a goose, mustn't he?
Meanwhile up at the upper, smaller pond, many of the birds seemed to prefer dry land to the water on this chilly day.
Just so you know, my elves have been very busy lately and the Humor Bank is full of great evidences of hilarity.
But this week I decided to challenge you.
So it's all words - no cartoons.
But I think (and after all, it is I who am the most important around here) that you'll still get a lot of laughter out of this week's selections.
So . . . here we go!
Thank you all, good friends, for the kind words you extended on yesterday's post.
They may be a bit premature though.
Yesterday marked an anniversary of Judy's and my first meeting.
We didn't get married until April of 1971.
Nevertheless, your kindness was greatly appreciated.
And a couple of things I left out.
As Tom (of France) pointed out, she is also an accomplished fence painter!
As well as an artist in many art genres over the years.
And a lover of books as well as the author herself of a finished but unpublished novel.
And, is it even necessary for me to mention that she is a marvelous cook?
Tradition tends to rein in our kitchen, as in a delicious and savory "pot of beans" she whipped up recently.
You may have thought from the title of this post that I was going to show you a card trick.
52 being the number of cards in a deck of playing cards.
But no, it's something else entirely.
It's the number of years that I have known the lady who stands by my side.
Exactly 52 years ago today, in Indianapolis, Indiana, I met a beautiful young lady known as Judy.
I fell instantly in love.
And 89 days later we were married, beginning a long and adventurous life together.
Over the years she has morphed into many things.
Barefoot beach visitor
There are many, many more images and memories I could share.
Let me just say that it's been a wild and wonderful ride.
A great deck of cards, one might say.