Texas is the only state where you can wear mittens with flip-flops.

In this post: A runny nose, a Macintosh milestone, winter weather.

It’s almost 6 a.m. and I woke up about 40 minutes ago sneezing. SNEEZING! And if that’s not crappy enough, my eyes are drippy, I’m freezing cold, my knees hurt, I’m thirsty as hell and I’ve got a craving for tuna salad on rye toast with teeny pickles. Life is certainly a puzzle, isn’t it?

The Howdygram would like to acknowledge an important birthday milestone! The very first Macintosh computer, pictured below, debuted on January 23, 1984, in a now-famous commercial during the Super Bowl. The original 128K Mac included one 400K floppy disk slot, a mouse, a keyboard and four fonts for about $2,300. It was the most thrilling moment of my life, even better than accidentally meeting Robert Wagner when I was drinking in the bar of Chicago’s Drake Hotel with my girlfriend Susan on our way home from work in October 1982. (I would NEVER joke about this.)

But I’m digressing. I bought my first Macintosh in 1985 and have owned nothing but Macs ever since. I was an “early adopter,” an unashamed evangelist and a total geek about fonts and software. I spent $795 for a 20-megabyte external hard drive and $1,200 for the first Hewlett Packard DeskWriter inkjet printer (which only printed in black) in 1987. It’s almost inconceivable to look back at those years and realize we had no email, no instant messaging, no Internet, no browsers, no hackers, no automatic software updates and no interruptions of any kind whatsoever with possible exception of Talking Moose (above left), an unforgettable little Macintosh app where a teeny image of Bullwinkle would pop up in the corner of your screen every few minutes with jokes and insults, such as: “Why don’t you ever take me to lunch?” or “Mind if I smoke?” or “Are you sure you want to delete that file?” or, out of left field, “I want a pizza.” Most of us installed Talking Moose on other people’s Macs to drive them crazy. (It absolutely worked.)

It’s 22° in the Dallas metropolitan area as I write this post. That’s DAMN COLD for our neck of the woods but at least we’re not getting the crazy crap that’s rolling through the southern part of the state this morning. There’s snow in Austin and San Antonio and an ICE STORM ALONG THE GULF OF MEXICO that’s affecting Laredo, Houston, Beaumont and southern Louisiana. The red star on the map below indicates Howdygram headquarters in Mesquite.

Here’s our psychotic weather forecast for the next five days in case you care about baloney like this. Please note the insane temperature swings from one day to the next, such as spring weather on Saturday and Sunday and snow on Tuesday. Texas is the only state where you can wear mittens with flip-flops.

I think I’ll go back to bed now because I’m just too damn cold to sit here any more. Thank you.