Memo To Meteorologists: Blow Me

It was a lovely, balmy, breezy Friday night. After sundown, the temperature dropped a bit and the wind freshened. Perfect weather for sitting out on the patio sipping your favorite cocktail and perusing our menu of delectables.

Except the weatherman on TV insisted that it was raining hailstones the size of refrigerators so we were all going to perish horribly if we so much as set foot outside. And people believed him. So no one went out and enjoyed a lovely night, and I spent the whole damn shift wondering how I was going to pay my power bill.

The quote of the night was from Mr. A, a regular customer who dines with his wife at the bar and is always good for 20% and good convo.

"Fuck James Spann," he declaimed after two lemon drop martinis. "I played golf all day and I'll walk the dog when I get home and it won't rain a drop tonight. Spann didn't even have his tie loosened."

See, Mr. A has picked up on the sartorial symbology in play when James Spann commandeers whatever hapless local affiliate he bloviates for: the more dissheveled he appears, the greater the threat of bad weather. Spann loves bad weather the way cannibals love plane crashes; once you get through the spiky bits, the inside is all soft and tenderized. Mmmmmm....tragedy. If Spann is wearing a coat and tie, the weather is fine. When the coat comes off, switch to the Weather Channel for a real update. When he's down to his skivvies and screaming for everyone to run to their place of safety, take an umbrella. When he's crouched naked behind a desk sobbing incoherently, a tornado was spotted three hundred miles away.

OK, I just looked at the doppler radar map from The Weather Channel. There's an intense line of storms that will sweep through in about an hour or so. For this we let school out at one o'clock and ruined my day's income. Meh.