i like calling north carolina home, BUT.....

I love being a North Carolinian. I have lived here all my life, and I don't really want to move away. I'm not one of these hillbillies who has never set foot out of my county; quite the contrary. I've been a number of places across this country and a few other countries. Some of them have impressed the hell out of me, but I still like it here.

However, the thing that drives me crazy is the damn ice storms we get. The "Johnny come lately Yankee carpetbaggers" make fun of us because we get our panties in a wad over three inches of snow. I'll admit that folks around here panic about snow, but to be fair, it isn't the snow that really makes us freak out. Unlike our friends above the mason-dixon line, we don't get lots of snow; our winter storms usually involve ice. Lots of it. Ice storm = buildup of ice on trees and power lines = high risk of power outage = old people die, and the rest of us freeze our asses off for three or four days.

I've said before that our restaurant suffers when there is ice. Snow isn't a problem. People love to come out when it snows. Ice, however, sucks. The roads get a little sloppy, and we're doomed. Tonight, for example, the roads have about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of ice. Not that bad, but nobody wants to leave the comfort of their house. This is a Saturday night, and we only did 105 covers (meals served). To put that into perspective, we usually do 400 or more on a Saturday night, and anything less than 300 is considered dead. This was our worst night ever. Suffice to say none of the hourly employees made any money tonight. Nor did the company. I left at midnight, when there is usually standing room only, and barely even standing room. Tonight there were perhaps 20 people in the whole place when I left. That sucks ass. Oh. Again, a perspective thing... Our capacity is 350. It's a huge building, so only having 20 people in there makes it look really sad.

The positive thing about ice storms is this. You spend 20 minutes scraping the ice from your front and rear windshields while your car is warming up. By the time you're done, your car is nice and cozy. You have purposely not scraped the ice from your windows because you hop in, roll down the windows, one by one. When you (slowly) roll the window down, the ice stays in place, and you can punch the ice away, pretending that you're punching the window out. Maybe it's juvenile, but I get a good kick out of that every time I do it.

I may have to skip out on the Pedro the Lion show tomorrow night. We're supposed to get more ice, all day tomorrow. Since the drive is 45 minutes, I'd really rather not bother if the conditions are less than favorable. Plus, there are some mitigating circumstances which don't bear mentioning at this point. I'll just say that I may have a very good reason to stay in town, but I won't know until tomorrow. You'll probably never know.

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