What's the temperature outside? I don't know, ask Jeremy Piven

I started writing this blog at 6:30am today. I rolled over in bed and had to let go of my wife to silence the alarm from my phone.

I wiped the sleepys from my eyes only to see I had 3 emails. 1 was from a local TV station telling me my daughter's school was closed, again, and the 2nd was a warning from my weather bug telling me there was a wind chill warning today until 2pm, and the 3rd was an email from the New York Times giving me the headlines for the morning so far.

6:30 in the morning comes way too early anymore. I used to be able to wake up no problem, but like I stated in my previous post, I have been a bit lazy.

As I roll out of bed and trek the 3 steps to the master bath, I scroll down on my home screen of the BlackBerry and see my weather bug application said it was -12 degrees. For those of you from other [read: warmer] parts of the country, that's minus 12 degrees. Not sure if you know this or not, but water freezes at 32 degrees. It was 44 degrees colder than that. Its so cold, if you took a cup of boiling water and threw it in the air, it would instantly vaporize and never hit the ground. Yeah, its that cold. If someone was here to video tape the experiment, I would demonstrate.

The dog didn't want to be out there too long. His morning pee was less than complete when he turned around to come back inside. The trail of yellow snow, like some sick and twisted paved road in the land of Oz told me so. I was only clad in my boxers and T-shirt and the cold air blowing in from the door froze the boogers in my nose instantly. I wouldn't want to be out there taking a leak either.

I got ready for work and left out the front door. To tell you what -12 feels like is something that cannot be described. My best stab at it is, take a shower without the hot water on, then get out into an air conditioned house, and then stand in front of an open refrigerator. Even still that is, by all comparisons, warmer than -12. I got out to my car, brushed off the snow that accumulated on it overnight, and tried to start it. Yeah, that was a joke.

My car groaned to life after 2 turns. You could hear every moving part of my car screaming in protest. Seems my car didn't want to wake up as much as I didn't. Once the spark plugs had enough spark to ignite the gasoline in the engine block the car made a funny noise. It was the sound of complete agony. The oil in the engine at this point is the consistency of cold syrup. It took about 3 minutes for the car to quite down and run normally. It stopped its temper tantrum. At that precise moment in the day, around 7am, I pulled out the BlackBerry and spoke some lines of today's blog into the voice recorder. Al Gore is full of shit I muttered between the chattering of my teeth.

Now why was I up so damn early? Sales meetings. Yeah, they are about as exciting as a root canal. Unless you are a freak for dentistry, you know what I am talking about.

Now, after the meetings were over I go back to the New York Times e-mail. I use that email as a morning paper of sorts. I read it with the coffee in the morning, but I don't have the actual paper. I get the morning news quick and easy. Yesterday was family game day. Audrey had a snow day because of the weather so we played board games and Wii all day. So yesterday's news was all news to me.

Story 1, 'Miracle on the Hudson.' Not interested, probably some weirdo telling us how they saw God in New York, not interested.
Story 2, Something about Obama and his inauguration, Again, who cares. You are costing me money in security to keep you safe, so who really cares.
Story 3, 'Piven to be sued by producers' What? Ari Gold is being sued? Damn.

I read Story #3. It was quick easy, and I get to see why one of my favorite actors is being sued.

I long and short of the story, Jeremy Piven was doing a play called "Speed-the-Plow". He left the show in December because his doctor said he was suffering from elevated mercury levels because of all the fish in his diet. Interesting.

As I get into the office someone has the newspaper and on the front page was the same story, "Miracle on the Hudson" but I can see a picture. In this picture there was an airplane in the water and people standing on the wing. My reaction was, holy shit, what happened? I read the paper and read about how this pilot flew a dead stick airplane to a safe landing in the Hudson River. I was totally impressed. This guy must have nerves of steel.

How many of us talk about how great we are. I have blogged about how awesome I was at work, and how I got it done. This pilot can trump anyone's story about how great they were with one line, "I landed an AirBus airplane in the Hudson River with no power. Oh yeah, and everyone lived."


This guy is a hero. I wish I could say one day that I saved 155 people's lives in one day. This guy did it. I am totally impressed.


After I was done reading the story I could help but think that, damn that water must be cold. I know what it feels like here in Ohio, I can only imagine how cold it was in a river, in cold water, on the wing of an airplane, with probably no jacket on, waiting for a ferry boat to come rescue me. I shiver just at the though of that.

Everyone at work told me about all the news coverage on the TV yesterday, and how all their cell phones were blowing up with all the CNN news alerts. I didn't even look at the BlackBerry yesterday, so I missed it all. It sounded like the news story I would have been glued to the TV all day watching unfold. In a way, I am glad the BlackBerry wasn't at the top of my mind yesterday.

At one point in the day, someone asked me what the temperature was outside, and I said, I don't know ask Jeremy Piven, he is apparently turning into a thermometer.

That was able enough to spark a conversation regarding the enlightening story I read in the Times, and not the same stuff everyone else was reading.

In other news, another blogger from my neck of the woods posted a post that I found hilarious. Check it out here.