How I learned to appreciate humidity

It took 33 years, but I finally developed some appreciation for the dreadful humidity we are subject to in this area. Oh, this doesn't mean I'm going to quit complaining, but inwardly, I'll be more appreciative.

You see, I took a trip to the southwest earlier this year. And that was before the summer heat and wild fires got going.

Having lived my whole life in a place where grass is pretty much standard - and sometimes unwanted - it was initially fascinating to be in the "high desert." In New Mexico, the first southwestern state I visited, the different colored rocks were very interesting to me, and I was consumed by taking pictures of nearly everything.

Gradually, the aridness started getting to me.

I marveled at how people could live out in the middle of predominately flat, dry land. Cattle grazed on what appeared to be nothing more than dust, rock, and the occasional mound of sagebrush.Think how giddy those cows would be if they were magically transported to the mid-Ohio valley where there's grass galore.

By the time I got to southern Colorado, I was beginning to get a little depressed. OK, maybe it was partially because of the intermittent altitude sickness I suffered when we climbed above 8,000 ft.

Dust blew. The dryness parched my nasal passages. I wished for rain. We camped on a dry, barren, rocky hillside, and I found myself rather edgy. I wanted water, just to see it. A puddle would have been nice, but something more substantial like a creek would have been preferred.

I recalled of the terrible summers we had in WV in the 1980s, when I remember walking on brittle, brown grass and the Little Kanawha sunk down yards from its normal shoreline. I'd felt the same way back then, like the world was coming to an end.

We drove on through Colorado, driving over places that were labeled rivers and creeks but were nothing more than dried-up ditches. I had previously considered the Little Kanawha a small river. Not any more.

When we got to Colorado Springs, we got a campsite beside a small stream with flowing water! There were huge trees on the bank of the stream. Gloriously huge trees. We admired them, to the point that we asked the owners of the campground what kind they were. Cottonwoods! No matter what he had said, I would have decided they were the most beautiful trees ever.

And eventually, somewhere in Kansas, I exclaimed happily, "Look! Trees on the hills!"

So I don't take it for granted any more. And humidity - well, with humidity at least there's a little hope for rain, so I'm OK with it. Well, more OK with it than I used to be.

But We Like Trans Fat

And now that Mister Bee has figured that out, they're planning to go back to the old trans-fat-rich partially hydrogenated soybean oil by the end of the summer.

I almost purchased a bag of sour cream and onion Mister Bee chips over the weekend, but then I thought, if I'm going to splurge, I don't want to be disappointed by the new taste, so I passed.

Kudos to the DMV, Once Again

For the third straight year, I've received my car registration eerily fast.

I dropped the envelope in the mailbox at 12:45 p.m. Monday afternoon and when I got home today, my new car registration card and sticker were waiting for me in my mailbox.

I don't even see how that's possible!

I wish my health insurance company would learn a thing or two from them.

Wrong Numbers

I get a lot of wrong numbers.

The calls roll in for a variety of reasons, but many seem to be because I have the extreme luck of having a phone number that is one digit off the phone number of the circulation department at the nearest daily newspaper.

As it turns out, when people don't get their papers delivered in the morning, they phone the circulation department, often in a state of great annoyance.

And maybe you didn't know this, but newspapers are delivered very, very early in the morning. Eight o'clock seems to be the panic point for a lot of customers.

Unless it's raining and a paper got wet, and then - oh joy - it can be even earlier.

So most of these calls I answer a) dripping, while wearing a towel because I was in the shower or b) while still half-asleep.

I can understand these wrong numbers, but what really surprises me is the number of people who get my breezy answering machine message and then leave detailed messages.

Apparently, they consider it absolutely normal for a newspaper to answer its phone, "Hi, this is S. I'm not home right now, so please leave a message."

Initially, I'd get home in the evenings, get the message, and feel extremely guilty that the caller had perhaps been waiting all day for someone to return their call, especially when the messages seemed to be from elderly people.

I got over that guilt pretty fast when I called one of those callers to let her know that she had gotten the wrong number.

"Well, I KNOW!"

She was annoyed by my call.

So, to safeguard against further annoying any of those wrong number dialers, I say, if you think your newspaper answers the phone, "Hi, I'm not home right now," then you are just out of luck.

Oh yeah, and just for the record, I am NOT the person who returned the DVD case to the public library without the DVD, but thanks for giving me a little variety in my answering machine wrong numbers. The public library and that borrower are also out of luck.

Big Plants, Big Religion

I traveled to western NC last weekend. Whenever I travel there, I'm struck by a couple of things.

First, kudzu on steroids.

Sure, we have our occasional hillside of kudzu around here, but compared to the mountains carpeted with the stuff that you find down there, what we have here is nothing. Their kudzu reminds me of a gigantic monster hiding under a green bed sheet.

Second, churches on steroids.

The first time I traveled through Tennessee and NC I was shocked by the size of the churches. My WV mind sees a structure of that size and immediately thinks "Civic Center" or "High School."

The one that really amazes me is located just outside of Johnson City, TN. It features multiple playing fields equipped with soccer goals. I know a lot of schools around here that don't have that kind of facilities!

Oh yeah, a really eerie thing happened as I was traveling on I-77. Both times I passed Robert C. Byrd Dr. outside Beckley - once on June 30 and again on July 4 - one of Sen. Byrd's Bible ads was playing on the radio.

Which brings me to another thing -- I think this is the first time in my life that I recall RCB actively campaigning, or at least it's certainly the earliest I remember hearing radio ads.

Not Open for Business: Wheeling Brothels

Wow - and here I thought the Festival of Lights was the most exciting thing to do in Wheeling!

Turns out the city has quite a colorful history (which I never heard about in WV history class, by the way), and that may have come to an end last week with the raid of the last brothel.