Four Seasons and George Jones

I'm once again at a place in my life where I can decide to go pretty much wherever I want. (Assuming that someone will actually hire me, but that is one of my least favorite topics, so it certainly doesn't belong here.) In my search for a job, location is of the utmost importance to me. I've come up with a pretty good list of requirements, one of the which is having four seasons. (Other things on the list include: fireflies, thunderstorms, and relatively close proximity to a major airport.)

It's been a few years since I've lived somewhere with textbook seasons. You know, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, red/orange/yellow leaves in the fall, and rain and tulips in the spring. I like the balance of the seasons; as a reward for a surviving a cold and snowy winter, you get a hot and sunny summer. It all evens out. Here in Anchorage we have two seasons winter and not winter; dark and light, which has a balance of its own, I guess, but it's just not quite the same. For example, it's May 4th; it's raining, which is spring-y, but it's also 35 degrees, which is not.

This week's hot jam is He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones. Generally, I wouldn't consider a song this melancholy to be a hot jam, but I do love it. Released in 1980, it was George's first #1 song in six years, and it's often considered the greatest country music song of all time, although I'm not so sure about that. How do you judge such a thing? But it does have its own website (http://www.hestoppedlovinghertoday.com/) so that must count for something. Also I love any song that has talking in the middle.



Fun fact about George Jones: His alcoholism is/was well known, and apparently one time his wife got mad at him for being drunk all the time so she hid the car keys and left. The liquor store/bar was 8 miles away and she knew he wouldn't walk that far. Fueled by alcohol withdrawals and a stubborn streak, George rode the lawn mower all the way there.