Merry Christmas
 
Hey, gang! It’s been awhile since we last talked. How was your holiday? Good? Well, fuck you. My holiday was shit. I was even on vacation and it was still shit. I was off from December 23rd until January 3rd -- it was supposed to be really great. I didn’t have to worry about rushing around with the holidays and traveling to a plethora of different places all on the same day. It was going to be stress free!

I went to bed on the night of the 22nd sleeping the sleep of the just. I woke up early on the morning of the 23rd to a dark room. I wondered to myself what time it was. I opened my eyes and looked for my alarm clock. I couldn’t see the red glow of the numbers, so I reached out and turned it to the left. No numbers. I turned it to the right. No numbers. In my freshly-waking stupor I was baffled. Then it hit me: The power was out. I threw back the covers and sat up and that’s when it got worse. It was really cold. I shuffled down the hallway until I found a flash light so I could read the thermostat. It was almost down to 60 degrees. This was not good. I went to the window and looked out to see that everything was covered in literally inches of ice. I immediately thought of one thing.

FUCKING SHIT DAMMIT MOTHER FUCK!!!

...Or something to that effect. My first day of vacation, and I had woken up to a completely crippled city without power and a family that was ready to start freezing their collecting asses off just two days before Christmas. Ho, ho, motherfucking ho. I knew that my dad, who lived twenty minutes away on a good day, had a gas log fireplace. Calling him on my trusty cell phone confirmed that I was not the only poor bastard without electricity. I had to get the fam out to his place if we were to survive. Then I remembered that the gas tank on the Jeep was on E(at me). I then thought of another thing.

DUMB COCK SUCKER SON OF A BITCH!!!

I didn't get gas the night before because it had been too cold and I wanted to go home. Oh, sweet irony. As it stood I had to go out in four inches of ice covered snow and carve out the door handles on my Jeep just to get the door open. Then I had to go to three different gas stations before I found one that was open. Everything was without power. The storm had stomped a serious mud hole in everybody’s ass. I shagged my fat ass back to the ranch and picked up the fam, which by now was getting seriously cold and we split for Dadsville.
 
We arrived at my dad’s after a 45 minute trip and he was pulling out the gas grill. The wife and I got the kids inside, then I helped my dad melt the ice off of the grill so we could have our tundra barbecue. We grilled some burgers and went inside. The only room that had heat was the one room in the basement with the aforementioned gas log fireplace. We all sat around the fire and ate our burgers.
 
And so it went for five goddamn days.
 
You got it kiddies. Almost a week we were without power. Staying in the same room with nothing to do. Cooking in subfreezing weather on a gas grill in the driveway. We even cooked a 20 lb. ham. Seriously. You wanna talk about a challenge, try that shit. Not to mention that my two year-old and six month-old got to spend their Christmas cramped up in a basement with their presents in shopping bags. You know what though? We were lucky. There were some people who just got their power back last week. It had been almost a month and not only had they not had power they had also been without water. They even had to set up portable shitters so they could... shit. That must’ve been terrible. Goin’ out in the snow to dump Grizzly Adams style. I guess it’s like my wife says, “Well, shit. Now we got next Christmas to look forward to.”

~~~~~

We don't know what exactly Tadd did to piss off the universe (although we can make a few good guesses), but feel free to contact him with your sympathies.