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.

sfsg

so far, so good.
Couple more days of rain to come, but things are looking OK so far. Sump pump came on every now and then last night while it rained pretty hard, but it never got overwhelmed. I'll hold off on a real verdict until Monday when the sun comes out again.

Rainy Saturday

It seem like I have been going like mad lately, and in great need of a break. The weather this weekend was predicted to be rain followed by rain, followed by showers. Fine, says I, I'll plan to spend the weekend in the basement welding odd bits of metal together to make something interesting.

Only this morning I awoke to find that it wasn't raining. Oh man. In fact, it was kinda nice. The sun even peeked through the clouds for a moment. Ok, then, says I; I'll build the new front steps. Start the burn barrel going to get rid of the accumulated scrap lumber and build the steps. Got the barrel started, chatted with the landlord (heckuva nice guy) and got set up to build the steps. Hmmm. had to reconfigure what I wanted to do dimension-wise, but that's ok. Scratch my head for a bit, got it. Make one cut, fine. Make two cuts, fine. Draw the third line - the raindrops start. Shit.

Shit, shit, double-shit. Maybe it'll pass. I try the Catholic approach (head down, deny anything unpleasant is happening) and finally give in and sprint around the yard to get the tools into the back of the truck. I laid two 12-foot pieces of pressure treated decking on top of the truck's cap and laid a tarp over it so I could sit on the tailgate without getting drenched. I sat. And sat. And cursed the rain. And watched my burning scrap sputter and spark in the downpour.

Finally I got up and went into the house to look at the weather map. Oh hell. I stayed inside and did dishes. Then I made lunch. Then, finally, the rain cleared. I went out, stoked up the burn pile into something respectable, made two cuts and the rain began again. I continued to nail in the rain until I felt the back of my shirt clinging to my skin at the belt line, at which point I retreated to the tailgate again, grumbling. Occasionally I would poke at the tarp to drive off the puddles that were accumulating up there. It was fun to watch the water cascade off into the driveway.

I noticed something as I sat out there. I mean aside from the wet and the chill and the soggy smoke smell. Grass is extra green in the rain. I had forgotten that. The robins were out in force, never mind the rain, hopping around pulling up prime bait to feed their babies. All of the trees have leaves now. All of a sudden, too. It seems like last week everything was still budding out, but today everything has leaves. I could hear the rain hitting them. It was very nice. Even the bamboo where the hummingbirds live has leafed out. For an invasive species, it's kinda pretty. And the hummers like it.

I guess I needed the break that the rain provided. I suppose I could still go downstairs and cut and grind and weld, but it's nice up here, going in and out of the house in accordance with the rain showers and the weather radar. Well, that, and I already took off the old steps. So I think I have to keep at this until it's done. I will just have to learn to adjust my pace to nature's moods. And I think that could be exactly what I have needed to do.