snow day

If I was a kid in school, I'd be pissed.

We got a ton of snow today. Enough that school would have been canceled if it had been a weekday. I used to hate weekend snowstorms when I was a kid. Wasted snow, I called it. A weekend snowstorm meant dad would make me get a shovel and help. On a weekday, I was considered too small to do it myself, so the plow guy came. I had to shovel the steps and path and stuff. And maybe the mailbox area. But on a Saturday or Sunday? We were saving money, getting exercise and bonding. Yeah. Right.

I got up early today to go shovel out the Congo church. Nice folks, and this was my first storm, so I wanted to make a good impression. I was there early and shoveled like mad, only to look back at the top of the steps I had just cleared and see that the granite was white again with snow. Shit.

Hearkening back to the old Eli Lily ad slogan, "Better Living Through Chemistry," I spread something like 20 pounds of ice melt stuff on the massive front steps (30 feet wide, going up maybe 8 or 10 feet. Okay, maybe six feet, but it felt like more than that. I can't see onto the top step from the street, so that's close to 6 or 8 feet, right? Right. Anyway, I sanded the piss out of that baby, then spread around enough road sand pilfered from the public sand pile (for those readers not from New England, each town has a stockpile of sand mixed with road salt to spread on the roads by the snowplows. The public is granted access to that sand pile, generally with the understanding that commercial contractors will not take advantage. I figure I am not bringing it home to use, so I am just running an errand for the homeowners. It's their tax-dollar-paid-for-sand, so I have very little guilt over it.

Today we got about 8 to 10 inches of snow. Then it began to rain. A lot. I shoveled the Congregational Church this morning for their service, but about six inches had fallen before it turned to rain. When we get there tomorrow it will be flat-out nasty. I have hired a helper for the day, but I think we're both going to be taking pre-emptive doses of Advil. Gonna be a long day tomorrow.

I'll try to have those interview questions out tomorrow after work. And I have to do a cool thing for that neat award that Robin gave me. Please be patient with me. I'm working on it.