{"id":2779,"date":"2013-03-10T05:59:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T05:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2779"},"modified":"2013-03-10T05:59:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10T05:59:44","slug":"the-real-way-to-tell-spring-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/10\/the-real-way-to-tell-spring-is-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Way to Tell Spring Is Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s got nothing to do with that poor, groggy Pennsylvania rodent that gets dragged out of his cozy den every year and held up in front of a camera, blinking like a video-game junkie emerging from a 36-hour <em>World of Warcraft<\/em> session. Poor Phil wouldn&#8217;t be anywhere near that harsh, brain-piercing daylight if it wasn&#8217;t for us impatient bipeds who can&#8217;t pay enough attention to the signs all around us and should be obvious if we&#8217;d only open our own bleary eyes. Signs such as these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The sad final rind of filthy, gritty, grayish snow has finally melted from that spot on the front lawn that&#8217;s always shaded by the front of the house.<\/li>\n<li>The kitty boys want to stay outside all day, and most of the night.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s a tremendous line at the carwash as everybody decides now is the time to hose off a three-month encrustation of road salt.<\/li>\n<li>A gleaming yellow-and-white &#8217;57 Chevy Bel Air pulls up next to you at a stoplight. Fifty-seven Bel Airs never have a three-month encrustation of salt on them, because they don&#8217;t leave the garage during the salty cold season.<\/li>\n<li>You see people wearing shorts at Target. Granted, this is Utah and people here are weird, so you can see that at nearly anytime of the year, but they&#8217;re not wearing a parka over their shorts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But you want to know the <i>real <\/i>indicator, the bottom-line, surefire, yep-there&#8217;s-no-going-back-now portent that we&#8217;ve finally broken the frigid back of Old Man Winter and those carefree summer days are right around the corner?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You drink your morning coffee to a serenade of about 257 Harley motorcycles rumbling past the house.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After the winter we&#8217;ve had, that&#8217;s sweeter music than &#8220;Moonlight Serenade&#8221; was to a 19-year-old private dancing his first dance back home after V-E Day. (Sorry. I&#8217;ve been watching a very long TV documentary on World War II lately&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s got nothing to do with that poor, groggy Pennsylvania rodent that gets dragged out of his cozy den every year and held up in front of a camera, blinking like a video-game junkie emerging from a 36-hour World of Warcraft session. Poor Phil wouldn&#8217;t be anywhere near that harsh, brain-piercing daylight if it wasn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}