Sir johannpiber! This is a glorious day because it is my birthday. lol...the 6th anyway, I don't know, it may be the 7th there by now. I am very simple minded so those things like time zones and such confuse me. But since I am so much older than you I can call you "Kid" and you shouldn't be having joint problems at your young age. lol. I have an excuse. You don't.

So I don't quite understand about the winter weather. You are saying that they are worse and longer now with more snow? I thought they used to be longer with heavier snow.

In 1977 I was in Kansas on a farm out in the country living there by myself. We had a major snow storm coming in and my girlfriend's sister had to be in a town a couple hours away so we took her and if was a snow storm on the way back. By the time I got a mile from my house there were already big snowdrifts blocking the road.

I had a shovel with me and would shovel a path through each one and I finally made it home. It turned out to be a record breaking blizzard with something like 2 feet of snow. My phone was dead and my electricity was out. Luckily I had a propane furnace and oven. But I couldn't go anywhere nor could I contact anyone for weeks.

Finally after 2 weeks I heard a tractor. I ran to the window and one of my brothers was coming across the field with a tractor with a scoop on the front of it, he was coming to check on me to see if I was still alive! lol.