Has Hell Frozen Over?

If it has seemed cold this year you are correct. Here are the newest numbers for 2009 which shows plus or minus the average temp compared to the last 30 years.

Jan -5.7
Feb +1.0
Mar +1.9
Apr -0.1
May -1.7
Jun -2.2
Jul -7.1 Coldest ever
Aug -2.7
Sep +3.1
*Oct -8.6 2nd Coldest ever - so far

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Getting a little frustrated at work. The problem the State Government is having is that 33% of the work force is either at or nearing retirement age which means many skilled people are leaving and not being replaced, AT ALL. This comes up because I've been running into requests which nobody has a clue where the original reports came from because so many people have retired. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. A report comes from Bob who retired but when I find that an input file is needed from Joe how retired and when I track down THAT program it needs an input file from Dean who is no longer here. They let people retire without having any back-up plan because they do not want to hire a replacement to save money. So I spend a week looking just looking for computer programs that have not been run for 4 years!

I won't go into how frustrated State Employees are.
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I attended the CCDA meeting last night which is SIM City for adults! Once again I left feeling pretty good on the direction that Columbus is moving. Lots of things going on that are just not ready to really go public yet. I'm just glad that real life SIM City has their natural Disaster switch turned off finally.

Every time I start a new SIM game I forget to turn off the Disaster button. Notice when I moved to Columbus we had floods, yup!! for got to turn it off again! My bad! Sorry. At least we did not have the Monsters! That would totally suck.

One noticeable thing that happened at the meeting was the very first LED Street light went on in Columbus JUST as the Columbus Energy Czar, Steve Sobiek pointed to it (sort of creepy if you ask me but I was not going to say anything because his finger obviously as some sort of powers that I did not want him to test on me). The LED street light was also held up my recycled street poles (perhaps made of old milk cartons??) Columbus is making a name for itself as being a very very GREEN town and perhaps one of the greenest towns in Wisconsin.

There is optimism that the MaySteel plant will have a new occupant in the coming months and there has been progress on the Grocery Store front (perhaps one and the same??)

Heck - I feel the biggest news is that PERHAPS Columbus will be the host city for SAGBRAW. The 2nd largest bicycle tour in Wisconsin (some say #1 but it's the little sister of GRABAAWR) but is is the oldest bike adventure and limited to 1000 riders (there is always at least 1000 riders). I've been on both rides for a total of 6 tours and this is a pretty big deal. People from all over the WORLD go on these week long 500 mile tours! I guess there are still negations going on with the school showers and the massive amount of toilet paper involved.

Being the "host city" is not THAT big of deal as in reality it's only 1 day bikers will be here. The final day is more of a "let's get out of here I'm sick of being on my freaking bike and man my ass hurts" day. But that first night people are active, antsy and looking for things to do and spend money on. CHING CHING!! You can sell 2000 pounds of pasta with ease and a LOT of beer will be consumed! I LOVE these rides as it is a carnival atmosphere, a moving city where each person can consume 7000 calories a day and lose weight!

In fact my first real writing came from doing GRABAARW as I wrote my experience daily for BikeWisconsin and their website. In 1992 we started in Boulder Junction and woke up in our tents to 22 degrees and frozen water lines (this is also the year I had my photo taken with Tommy Thompson), in 1995 we rode 90 miles in a 125 heat index and three other days in temps over 100, and in 1993 we had major floods to deal with. Awesome fun stuff.

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Seems the movie "Where the Wild Things Are" is creating a stir. Children are getting scared to death and many people are saying this is NOT a child flick but very grown-up with a lot of talk that involved death and threats of violence to children. Some kids are OK but others are freaking out when One Wild thing has his arms ripped off. Well - that is to much for me for sure! What is this, like ET meets Private Ryan??

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Back to the CCDA meeting . Seems we're looking at putting up a big monument between the to Columbus Ramps onHwy151. 19,000 cars pass that area every day and most do not even know there is a town nearby. So they want a big WELCOME monument. I suggested this would be the perfect place to put Udey Dam with COLUMBUS THE DAM CITY painted on the side. OR OR - hang it OVER the highway!!! A giant guitar was talked about or maybe a giant carriage proclaiming COLUMBUS THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO MOVE INTO THE 20TH CENTURY! but I think that idea was scrapped also.

Of course the answer is right in front of their eyes but, no, no one seems to take me seriously anymore!

I keep coming up with the good ideas but I'm just poo pooded and my ideas are just shoved to the back of the refrigerator like old pie.

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Speaking of old things. The meeting was held in the $1 Anchor Bank building and we had a tour of the complex (can I call it a campus??) I know where I will go when we have the nuclear threat like on Jericho (another town of 5000). There are places with 1 foot concrete walls in the basement (I looked but found no money laying around, Anchor Bank did a good job of cleaning I guess).

It's nice to see the building in use.

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Movie Star Wife is having a flu shot clinic at 10-2 Tuesday at Pick N Save Columbus in the Cold and Flu aisle (I just sneezed . . . hmmmmmm I find that disturbing). Actually the real wording was a "Flu Clinic" with nothing about shots at all! So if you HAVE the flu go check it out (Clean up in aisel 7).

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I have thoughts about giving the City Council pay raises. Perhaps I would agree to a pay raise if they could justify what they have done. One thing is that I believe is IF they get pay raises then our Mayor is REALLY underpaid as he does a LOT more then the rest of the City Council, but I do not know the complete facts so oddly I'll be silent on this (which is odd because normally I don't need no facts to back my opinions!).

Have a good Tuesday!

Rod