This is a photo from the top of our stoop on Wednesday after the latest snow storm. We thought we were only going to get a dusting but it piled up. It is a bitch to shovel and I am too old for that. I ain't getting a heart attack. Thank God for the Mexicans!Saturday, January 29, 2011
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I shoveled snow Wednesday night in DC for the first time in about 20 years or so. There was plenty of shovel-ready jobs to go around there. But lots of people chose to stay home instead.
Reminds me of being a kid in our apartment when a big snowstorm knocked out the lights in the building but not the streetlights and we lit candles and for some reason there were a whole lot of neighbors in the apartment, anyway it felt like a party, and I stood by the window in the semi-dark apartment and looked out at the snow falling through the streetlights.
Some artsy fartsy stuff from DC I put up on Twitter: link.
Man, those guys sure don't know how to drive in snow.
oh that was a nice comment....thank god for mexicans...grrrrrr.
ehhhh hombre....you need to have more respect for the labor movement...
http://opusonemedia.blogspot.com/2010/09/little-odes-to-labor-day.html
Hd I love my Mexicans. I think every family should have one.
I mean when I was a kid me and my friends would go around and shovel to pick up a few extra bucks. But the Yuppie puppies around here are too busy playing video games and stealing drugs from their mothers purses to be bothered working.
God bless our hard working Mexican immigrants who help a beat up old codger like me.
It snowed here last night and today, way up in the north woods.
Last night's snow was heavy and wet, a couple of degrees shy of being sleet or rain. It weighed down the car, clogged the wipers, reduced visibility to nearly none. A five hour drive became an eight hour slog; the last half of the trip over highways that hadn't been plowed or salted.
We got here after midnight, exhausted, unpacked and tumbled into bed.
Today's snow began at sunrise and continues as I write this. It is a quiet snow, flat, white feathers, falling slowly, without any wind to sail them into drifts. The flakes are like lapsed Catholics: nearly no mass, adrift, descending.
Unlike the previous evening's miserable frozen agglomeration, today's snow is beauty and delicateness; a wonder to watch, a thing that makes one grateful for the gray sky just to better see every flake.
Chet, our snowplow guy, showed up just after noon to open the drive. Chet is my age but looks twenty years older. He's worked outdoors all his life, and a toll has been paid. The price is hips and knees that wore out and were replaced. His eyes still twinkle, his beard is ruddy, his mustache stained with the nicotine of cigarettes past. He hobbles now; the spryness we saw when we met fifteen years ago has gone.
We made it into town in the afternoon for lunch and a few groceries for tonight and tomorrow. The falling snow muffled most of the ordinary sounds; even the omnipresent snowmobiles.
The sun sets early up north in winter, leaving us in the dusk before 5:00.
Back in the cabin, a fire of hard, dry oak and maple crackles in the fireplace; Jane Monheit, Levon Helm, Joe Cocker and Miles Davis lull us from the electronic boxes in the other room, and there is Knob Creek whiskey in my cracked, ceramic USS Ronald Reagan coffee cup.
We'll be back home tomorrow night, in time to prepare for the big snowstorm that will interrupt mid-week.
I love snow; I hate snow. I still live here with no plan of moving to a warmer clime. The 'love snow' part of the argument still has the upper hand.
But Michael you are used to snow. It is like Jason being used to alligators and hd being used to irate clients. It's all a matter of what we are used to dealing with.
But what you describe sounds like a lot of fun.
We struggled through the snow last night to the wine and cheese joint with some friends and sat and ate and drank to the wee hours of the morning. It was warm and toasty but the walk home sucked. One of our friends had to cab it back to Manhattan but we lucked out as a cab was dropping someone off at the bar on the corner and he was delighted to get a fare back to the city.
Winter in New York with snow like this is very unusual. It's almost as rare lately as the Packers being in the Super Bowl. Just Sayn'
It is fun. I grumble about it, but I like it, with the exception of late April when winter has become old and dull.
Changing seasons is good for the body, my Irish granddad believed. It puts different stresses on the body at different time of the year; the body grows stronger by learning to adapt.
There's a big snowstorm heading for my home and yours midweek-if the NWS is to be believed.
The Packer fans flying to Dallas to watch Pittsburgh fold will have trouble getting there. The skies will be blue on Sunday, however, when the Lombardi Trophy wings its way back to Green Bay, where it belongs.
Those last three comments, taken together, are another example of why I still read blogs.
"Late April"??!?
Good lord.
We had winter a month ago. It was old at about week five.
We might have another Indian Winter here for a week or two.
Seems like plenty.
In the Midwest the whites still do the jobs that Mexicans do in the East.
I'm back at home now, having driven from the northern part of the state to the southern.
The NWS issued a blizzard warning for a series of storms they believe will hit our area Monday afternoon through Wednesday night. They predict 20+ inches of snow and blustery winds.
The NWS online weather statement included these exact words, in caps: "NEEDLESS TO SAY THIS COULD BE A HISTORIC BLIZZARD CAPABLE OF PARALYZING PARTS OF SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN."
Historic, eh?
I'll bet the under on the 20" of snow. Just to be safe, though, I filled the fuel tanks on both cars, got a couple of gallons of gas for the snowblower, and went to the grocery store.
I avoided the bread and milk aisles, known combat zones during pre-blizzard buying sprees. I bought coffee beans and a bottle of Jameson. Bring it, weather dudes, I'm ready.
I may have to rev up my hibernating blog just to report on the end-of-the-world snow storm we have headed our way.
I have a homeless guy to shovel mine. Illegal aliens charge too much. I give the guy a double saw buck and he does a good job. He is a veteran. Better a veteran than an illegal.
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