Tired

  We've had two "snow days" so far this school year.  As usual, that means there is freezing rain making glass of the roads, and the school buses can't all run safely, so the kids don't come to school, but many of the teachers do.  I stayed at home for both snow days, as I hadn't got my snow tires put on my car yet.  Snow days are usually more of a January-March thing.

  For those who don't live where it snows, for most of the year you have regular tires on your car (called "all-season tires" instead of "useless in winter tires") but you have to keep a spare set of snow tires someplace, and get them switched onto your car each year.  The snow tires are slightly more knobbly in their treads, but more importantly, they are made of a rubber which doesn't get as hard as a slippery rock as soon as the temperature approaches the freezing point of water.  As the rubber they are made of is designed to continue to be stretchy and grabby at temperatures somewhat below freezing, they work better.  And today the roads have little patches of ice covered with slush and puddles.

  My snow tire routine is probably different than for some Canadians.  I keep my snow tires at my dad's place, which has piles of junk everywhere.  My tires get thrown in with piles of tires of motorcycles, four-wheelers, tractors, bicycles and any number of cars and trucks my father no longer owns or perhaps has never owned.  (He collects things to use and sell, and then seldom uses or sells them.)

  So, inspired by being scared to drive my car yesterday on the glassy roads, I made an appointment to get the snows put on today.  And there was quite a large snow storm all day.  There is a huge difference between a huge fall of snow that lasts four hours, and then stops and can be plowed, and moderate snow that never stops falling so you can't see well while driving, nor can it be plowed away because it keeps coming.

  I drove from school to the town where my parents live, the driving being fairly treacherous.  I indicated the piles of tires and asked my father "Where are mine now?"  They weren't where I'd left them last spring when I had them removed so the softer rubber wouldn't wear out quickly as the temperatures rose.

  My father waved airily at the piles of tires and said "Well, they're the only 17" snows in there..."  Like I should have been able to spot them from a distance.  But then he was nice.  The garage where I get my tires done is right next to my father's property.  So my dad rolls tires over to the wooden fence and just tosses them over when he's getting tires changed.  He did that, so I wouldn't have to go through stacks of tires looking for ones that had a "seventeen" written on them in black raised letters on black rubber.

  I dropped my car next door, then waited for the four tires to be tossed over, then rolled them through the snow over to the garage in pairs and leaned them outside.  Then I came home, where my father was doing a puzzle thing where they've hidden thirty names of books from the bible:

(There are 30 books of the Bible in the following paragraph.  Can you find them?
This is a most remarkable puzzle.  It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat  pocket, on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for hours.  He  enjoyed it so much; he passed it on to some friends.  One friend from Illinois worked on  this while fishing from his johnboat.  Another  friend studied it while playing his banjo.   Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly  newspaper column.  Another friend judges the job of solving this puzzle so involving;  she brews a cup of tea to help her nerves.  There will be some names that are really easy  to spot.  That's a fact.  Some people, however, will soon find themselves in a jam;  especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized.  Truthfully from  answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or scholar to see  some  of them at the worst.  Research has shown that something in our genes is responsible for  the difficulty we have in seeing the books in this paragraph.  During a recent fund  raising event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Phi lemonade booth set a new  sales record.  The local paper, The Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who had  reported that this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever seen.  As Daniel  Humana humbly puts it, “The books are right here in plain view hidden from sight.”   Those able to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who have to be  shown.  One revelation that may help is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur  without their numbers.  Also, keep in mind, that punctuation and spaces in the middle  are normal.  A chipper attitude will help you compete really well against those who  claim to know the answers.  Remember, there is no need for a mad exodus.  There really  are 30 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found.)

  (Malachi and Titus were ones I found that I thought were pretty hard) An hour later after helping my father find bible book names, I went over, rolled the all-season tires over to the fence and tossed them over (having swapped my black teaching blazer for a red flannel lumber jacket of my dad's), paid the guy who owns the garage, who I went to high school with, and who was on the phone with his sisters, who I also went to high school with, and drove the car to my folks'.  Then I rolled my four all-seasons over the a tire pile and piled them there.  Done.  Cold, snowy hands.  And now it's time for hot lasagne.