![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
As mentioned, the plan for Thursday was to expect that we'd be in to work, unless conditions prohibited. I didn't expect it would be off, since the storm showed clear signs of tapering off even though the NBC Red Network's station from New York City insisted on delaying the penultimate 11:35 Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien rerun 25 minutes so they could feature more coverage of how it's snowing out, just like the previous 18 hours of programming featured. But the word came, too late to have any real fun with it: Thursday was day off too. Any day you can wake up to the news of going back to sleep till noon is a good day.
Meanwhile, the actual Thursday afternoon turned out to be bright and sunny, and even above freezing, so we had the happy circumstance of a day off, lots of snow, and none of it on the streets or sidewalks. Many of them were even dry. Except it wasn't perfectly in the clear since my car, in the neighbor's driveway, had been buried behind fresh-plowed snow. I don't know why they would have shoveled out most of the driveway and not the ramp from driveway to street; my theory is the people the homeowner's association hired shoveled the driveway out, and then they plowed the streets again, and hadn't been back since. This doesn't quite fit with everyone else having clear driveway paths, but perhaps someone knows that the neighbor isn't actually there and my car is just squatting. (With the neighbors' permission and because they know it makes the house look more occupied.)
So for the first time since moving out of Troy I had to shovel snow. And while I only had a couple linear feet across a two-car driveway to do, plus some space behind my car for completeness, and I'm in much better shape than I've ever been in my life, I realize: boy, I like not shoveling snow. I got about as sweaty as I do in my WiiFit Aerobics, so I suppose I got a free hour of exercise out of it. I also learned there's something about shoveling snow which inspires people to tell you you're doing it wrong. In one case it was my father advising me that I could throw snow out into the street, where it would melt. Yes, but if I threw too much out in the street I'd turn the road into a block of ice come nightfall. And the neighbors across the street were insistent that ``they'' should have shoveled the driveway out. Maybe they should have, but I didn't know who to call and I'd rather have my car out ... only 50, 45, and 40 minutes later.
There's rumors of snow for Monday or Tuesday, the latter of which would give me yet another snow day if it were deep enough. It would also threaten the driveway space as, when there's snow scheduled, my father for some reason parks in the neighbor's driveway next to my car instead of in his own driveway like he does all the rest of the year. With a bit of a margin of snow shelf on either side it's getting a little crowded in there.
Trivia: The International Olympic Committee hoped to have an ice skating competition for the Athens Olympic Games of 1896, but the organizers did not have an ice rink. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. (Doesn't that somehow sound like an ethnic joke?)
Currently Reading: The Maverick And His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr And The Making Of IBM, Kevin Maney. Is it excessively snarky to note this book by a USA Today columnist has really overly large a typeface? It's not quite a Large Print edition but you can see it from here easily.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-13 05:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-14 05:19 am (UTC)You have it, completely and wholeheartedly. Digging out a little stretch of driveway once is bad enough; having to go through it again is terrible.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-13 06:01 pm (UTC)Those who run smelting businesses on the Kennebec River (ice fishing shacks set out on the frozen river that people pay to sit in to catch smelts through holes in the ice inside the shack) have all-but-written-off their businesses for this year thanks to last month's thaw and the unbudging ice jam with buckled ice 15 feet thick in places that's near impossible to describe, it just needs to be seen to be understood.
Snowmobile tourism? Huh!?! Not unless you travel to the very top of Maine and even then it's not that great.
Only downhill skiing is having a good season and only because they can make their own snow.
Please, please, take pity on us Mainahs and send us back our snow!!! Our economy was down the tubes before you stole our snow. Now...well, now, we're in a depression in everything, but name. :'(
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-14 05:24 am (UTC)You're welcome to it, every cubic foot that isn't demanded by the Vancouver games first. It's fun having the time off, but I'm a little past the age where the driveways should be flanked by snow banks taller than I am.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-17 02:44 am (UTC)Shoveling our driveway, sidewalks and four cars hasn't been a problem because (a) three ablebodied shovelers are involved and (b) there's a gas-powered snow-thrower. The real problem subsequently has been the pallisade of lethal icicles along the eaves; and more directly, the frozen puddles they leave on the porches.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-18 04:45 am (UTC)You know, I've never lived near enough a snowplowing authority boundary for it to stand out. I'd use the highways getting from town to town, even in the Capital District, and that obscured just who couldn't get the snow removed and who could. The Northway just got itself swept clean-ish.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-17 08:44 am (UTC)The dishes though are and shall be K's responsibility.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-18 04:42 am (UTC)Given the need to wash dishes by hands, I'd certainly let it be someone else's responsibility. Shovelling snow, well, that doesn't come up quite so oppressively often, even if it does get to be really bad at least a couple times a year.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-22 08:19 pm (UTC)I suspect if K were to move out (Which is a higher possibility than I'd like to admit may occur later this year, and no, I won't go into that on LJ) I'd be doing dishes about weekly, given that I estimate I'd use about 80% less dishes by mostly eating at work.
--Chi
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-23 04:20 am (UTC)Oh, my. Well. I hope the possibility doesn't come to pass then.
Based on my Singapore experience, on my own, I'd need to wash glasses at the rate of about one a day, and knives and spoons for various simple meal preparations (eg, for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or for egg salad) at slightly higher rates. Not too much, admittedly, since for sandwiches I'd use folded-over paper towels for `plates'. And I've lately been giving in to the 12-pack soda cans rather than pouring glasses anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-23 10:07 am (UTC)2-liters being cheaper per ounce of soda, generally I tend to go with 2-liters. I could potentially throw in the cost of washing cans, the volume the cans versus 2-liters take up while being saved for deposits, and whether or not I drink more soda in glasses than from cans; but I don't need to be that picky. $1 for a 2-liter is roughly $2.50 for a 12-pack ouncewise and I see the former much more frequently. (Goodness knows I'll splurge for a $1.59 20-ounce soda at the 7-11 if it's what I'm in the mood for, mind. Thrifty has its limits.)
--Chi
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-27 04:15 am (UTC)Yeah, there's no defending buying 12-packs rather than two-liter bottles on economic grounds. It's most defensible, if you don't need conveniently portable medium-range transportability, on the grounds of not wanting to do any dishes at all, and at that it'd be more economical to buy paper (or foam) cups.
All I can say is, you know, I don't want to wash dishes at all, and I sometimes need the portability, and the five-cases-for-ten-dollars deal at ShopRite or the like will last me a month or more and I don't need to save four dollars a month.