Pray For My Warmth Tomorrow Please

My son called me earlier today. He was wanting to know if I had seen the latest forecast for tomorrow.

I had. Repeatedly actually.

I didn't share his excitement though. He was thrilled that the weather forecast was now only calling for a low of -14F, rather than the -16F previously forecast.

We're going ice fishing tomorrow. While I like to fish, I'm not a fan of ice, unless it's in the cooler keeping my diet Coke cold. But the kid is persistent and decided since I'm not going to get a weekend day off from work until mid February he took a vacation day tomorrow since I'm off then.

I think I'm prepared, as dreadfully prepared as one can be anyway.

I got off work last night at 9:00 pm and decided that maybe a stop at Walmart wouldn't hurt. New gloves, a snowsuit, and warmer winter boots were on my mind. Walmart sucks. (Unless you think accomplishing a third of your goal a success.) An acceptable snowsuit was found at a decent price. ($29.99) I like 50% off sales. Saving $30 bucks is never a bad thing. But they had no boots nor gloves that would suit my needs.

As I was off today I ran out to Gander Mountain. They're never rarely out of shit. The reason for this is they're usually pretty expensive so when it comes to winter clothing they're the last outfit in town to run out of it. They didn't let me down in this respect. I'm much poorer due to them not letting me down actually.

One pair of boots - $109.00 (The little sales twerp pointed out they were $80.00 off repeatedly as I stared them down for perhaps ten minutes.) I bought them and as he was prepared to utter how great a price this was, for the eleven-teenth time, I cut him off. I may have muttered about shoving one of them up his ass on Saturday if my feet ended up frozen blocks of ice on Friday.

Next up, gloves.

Apparently my mumbling threats didn't scare off the little sales twerp because he followed me over to the gloves/mittens section. He was like an encyclopedia of glove knowledge. After listening to him ramble on for a few minutes I chose a pair of gloves ($39.99). He seemed pleased with my choice and only told me once that I was saving $10.00, as they were 20% off and normally $49.99. (Maybe that boot to ass threat mumble was on his mind.)

"What's up next", he asked after the choosing of the gloves ceremony.

I told him I was just going to meander over to the ice fishing equipment aisle. So off we go, me and my adopted little sales twerp. I have to admit the kid was growing on me at this point. I can usually differentiate between a salesperson whose trying to up sell, or is just genuinely being helpful. He was just trying to be helpful.

So we get over to that aisle and he's uncharacteristically quiet. He finally admitted that ice fishing wasn't something he knew a lot about. Me either, I told him, which seemed to brighten him up a bit. I then asked him to tell me what's been selling well in this aisle. That got him back on track.

I picked out a few things and as we proceeded up to the checkout he asked me if I was serious about the whole boot in the ass comment. I told him he had earned a reprieve. The worst thing that could happen was me shoving his head in a snowbank. He seemed to feel this was the lesser of two evils himself. Pretty nice kid.

On an entirely different note, what is unknown precipitation? I've been a little obsessed with checking the weather online today and that was listed as occurring. I looked out the window to see it was snowing. Apparently today snow is considered "unknown precipitation."

All I know is that I spent almost $200.00 today, most of it in an effort to be warm tomorrow. I don't even care if we catch any fish as long as I stay warm.