I grew up in Upstate New York where we always received nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding. You’ve heard of the Bible Belt? I lived in the Snow Belt where the first snow would fall sometime in October and the last of the white stuff melted in April. Sometimes the fluffy flakes would re-visit in May, like the day I graduated from college and we had a campus snowball fight using our mortar boards for shields.

When one door closes, and another door opens, you are probably in prison. To me, “drink responsibly” means don’t spill it.

Blue Monday I totally missed it, and I’m usually good at picking up on these things. It literally went right by me, unnoticed.

You probably woke that fateful morning, assuming everything would probably run along on the accustomed track. Never dreaming – or nightmaring – that particular day would be so much different than you expected.

Have you ever watched a volleyball game and witnessed an entire team suddenly duck under the net and join the other team? Gasping for a breath of hope that isn’t there, they had finally thrown up their hands in despair and crossed to the other side of the net. Just gave up, gave in, and joined the enemy.

Jim Priest is CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Oklahoma and can be reached at jpriest@okgoodwill.org. NO MORE THERMOSTAT WARS According to study conducted by Innovative Psychological Consultants the top three things couples argue about are money, sex, and children.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, he sings. SUNDAY SATIRE 8:10 - A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn’t make a snow woman.

One of the perils of life is putting too much value on “stuff.” Stuff can be about anything. It can consist of what we have or what we don’t have.

Has America become the land of the special interest and home of the double standard? Let’s see: if we lie to the Congress, it’s a felony and if the Congress lies to us it’s just politics; if we dislike a black person, we’re racist and if a black dislikes whites, it’s their 1st Amendment right; the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims; in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process; you can kill an unborn child, but it’s wrong to execute a mass murderer, we don’t burn books in America, we now rewrite them; we got rid of the communist and socialist threat by renaming them progressive; we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea; if you protest against President Obama’s policies, you’re a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right. You can have pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas; we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people; we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it’s wrong to use an animal.

To raise money for their mission trip, the St. James Youth Group is smelling cookbooks.