Please sir, draw me a sheep

Today is a holiday according to my work calendar. I slept in, at least compared to my usual schedule. It was -12 F when I got up -- real temperature, not imaginary "it feels like" temperature. A buddy commented that it is so cold the white trash girls are wearing two pairs of pajama pants to WalMart.

It looks like another day reading, watching TV, and staring out the window. I don't mind going for a walk in the cold, but it has to be above "you can get frostbite or die" kind of cold. Of course, I wouldn't die. That warning is for the potential Darwin award winners out there who do perpetually stupid stuff.

Weather extremes remind me why humans are the predominate creature on this planet. We are remarkably adaptable. We can survive in a wide range of temperatures from bone chilling cold to numbingly hot. We thrive in deserts and swamps. We live in mountains and prairies. Not the fastest of animals, we can run for hours on end. A man can run a horse into the ground. Man is cunning and despite our veneer of civilization, surprisingly vicious. Man can eat nearly anything, including our fellow man, in a pinch. Whether you credit an infinite Supreme Being, Mother Nature, or random genetic mutation, Homo Sapiens is adaptable. I could fly from freezing weather to overheated tropics today with no ill-effects at all.  There is a reason we are at the top of the food chain, the true King of Beasts. I am willing to prove it if anyone wants to send me to the tropics. I can name some Caribbean Islands that would suffice as proper testing grounds.

 Further evidence of our exalted status as top predator: it is cold outside. I could go out and survive, but I don't have to. And I won't. If your supposedly smart dolphin manages to get stuck on the beach, he cannot get himself back into the ocean. An African lion would perish on Greenland. I sit in my temperature controlled office drinking coffee. There it is.

Heavy thoughts for a ... Tuesday. Have a good day.