Party at Lux and Racing the Snow

First off: thank you to everyone who made it out to Lux on Saturday night. I had a great time seeing everyone and only had to pay for one drink myself. A special kudos to Michelle who encouraged me not to wear my awesome dragon vs. eagle t-shirt (who will win in the epic battle??? You'd think flames would be a problem for a bird, but he seems to have it handled). Instead I wore a pretty spiffy black button-up number. That, combined with my wool overcoat, spiked hair and new glasses made me irresistible to at least one fellow who was bear-trawling at Lux on Saturday. I was certainly flattered, and he seemed like a very nice fellow, but ultimately not my type.

So I'm trying to beat the winter out of town. I spent most of the weekend trying to come up with good similes for winter arriving in Rochester:

• "Winter in Rochester falls like a guillotine."
• "Winter in Rochester descends like a flaming air liner."
• "Winter in Rochester arrives with the suddenness of a bullet."
• etc., etc.

I think you can get the point. Fall lasted for all of two weeks, this year. I remember thinking to myself how pretty the changing leaves were and the pleasant briskness in the air (good fire pit weather) for just a few days before freezing rain started falling from the sky and sunrise was pushed back to 9:00 am. Getting out of bed even at a reasonably late time in the morning already feels like the middle of the night. So I'm trying to race the snow to get out of Rochester, and I think I'll probably make it just in time.

There are actually some updates as of this morning on my schedule to get out of Dodge. I will be flying to Birmingham on Wednesday, and driving from there to Ft. Benning for training on Saturday. This is actually a bit of sticky point as in-processing starts at 0800 in Benning and I'm planning to have another going-away party Friday night in Birmingham. I think I'll just have to roll out of bed at 0400 and make my way down there--at least traffic will be light on 280.

So after training, I've already got my flight to Kuwait booked. After that, I'm dependent on the military to get where I'm going, so we'll be holed up there for a little while. I'm looking at a map right now, and you'll notice that conspicuously lodged between Kuwait and Afghanistan is a very large expanse labeled "Iran." Hmm... I guess we take the long 'round.