The Elysian Fields

The snow won.

At least for tonight.

Someone - who shall remain nameless, but who I can see every single time I look in a mirror - forgot to buy more gas. Two hours of gas - for mowing or plowing - goes almost that far on layers of thick icy snow, packed tight, and that's not enough to clear our driveway. Took most of a half a tank just to clear a path down to the street and back, in about 4 passes, because it kept riding up on the ice layer. Finally, I let it do so, made it down, then continued back up, wash, rinse, repeat, and it was pretty clear. After that, I took half a cut in each direction and it did okay. Right now the driveway is about half-way clear, which, in some parts is probably enough to fit the Subaru down to go get gas in the morning.

Then, after it has time to settle down, and after we've packed down two tire tracks worth, I'll finish clearing it.

Oh, I used a cheap dust mask to help keep the air warm (if somewhat recycled) and that worked reasonably well, so I didn't have any of the major breathing difficulties cold air seems to give me these days.

Yes, we had a major snowstorm - schools closed, school delayed, accidents left, accidents right, oh my!

Because of the magnitude of this blizzard, I propose a new unit of measurement for such excessive amounts of snow that is designed to please the litigation-happy (or scared) crowd.

Today's event, for instance brought up to 12* of snow! That's right folks, a whopping 12*! Drifts in some place may have even reached 18-24*

The * symbolizes, of course, that most basic unit of snow measurement, sure to inspire fear and large numbers everywhere: the snowflake.

12 snowflakes deep, this mighty blizzard was - why, you almost couldn't see the road in places! And the gravel driveway, why parts of it - some of the spots between the massive boulders - were nearly buried half-way with snow!

And, to top it all off, I even saw three whole snowflakes falling! Wow! Such record January snowfall as has never been seen!

I will note, however, that Deb suspects those snowflakes might have fallen out of one of the trees... tragic!

For those of you so inclined (which seems to be a sizable portion of my flist), blackbyrd2 has a list of things the Shrub has been accused of in this post - for the sake of completion, can you think of anything to add?

~ ~ ~

I took the Forester to work today. Keep wanting to call it Foerester, after a former co-worker, but sometimes I manage to spell it right on the first try (took two today.) Speaking of politics (which we were) and flip-flops (which we weren't,) I went back and forth a half-dozen times this morning - work from home or commute in? First, felt lousy, very tired. Home it is! Second, two projects, one great for work at home, the other - due first - involving lots of phone calls. Commute it is! Weather sounded lousy outside. Home! Looked out the window and weather's fine. Commute! Sub-Plot: Rachel almost didn't go to school on account of being unable to kick her cold, but she really wanted to go.

Just hopped in the shower, and Deb asks how quick I'm out - apparently school was canceled, and Justin had already taken Rachel down to the bus stop. Brandon was up, and would require much time to get ready to go. Brandon wound up back in his crib, and Deb went and got the other two kids. Weather, bad? Maybe stay home. Yell down asking for a weather update. 4-6 inches. Better stay home. Get dressed in jeans, t-shirt, and two sweatshirts (first one was Justin's so I gave it back - bit tight on me, just a wee bit...)

Forecast is now 1-3 inches, and the Lehigh Valley has nothing going on. Better go in. Deb cancels plans for taking Justin and Brandon skating. Better take the Forester.

And there we have it, decision-making made easy!

~ ~ ~

The Forester's cd-player is fixed - replaced, really - so I didn't have to worry about weak-signaled stations getting lost every five minutes on my winding-road, hill-and-valley ride. Of course, up first was Bon Jovi's Bounce, and then Disturbed's The Sickness. I actually had the chance to listen to some of the lyrics on the latter, and damn, is it depressing and/or violent and/or sailoresque in language.

Need some good, epic power metal to wash it out of my head. Wagnerian opera is close enough. =)

Think I'll do the radio struggle on the ride home.

~ ~ ~

Decision Making Revisited: forecast is back up to 4-6 inches for the southern Poconos.

Not a bad snow at all.

Only took an hour and a half for Justin and me to clear the driveway and two cars!

I'll up the estimate a wee bit: we had right around two inches.

And yeah, someday, I'll get a snowblower.

Because two inches of snow is still about 12,000 1000 cubic feet of snow removal in our neck o' the woods. (I did an earlier estimate in someone's - dreadpiratetait's? - journal, and I think I left off a zero in the number of square footage of driveway!)

EDIT: Don't do math when it might be conflicting with the activity of breathing - at least one of them will be wrong or won't work. 1,728,000 cubic inches != 12,000 cubic feet.

The situation remains more or less the same, except slightly less so, if you know what I mean.

( cut for length... )

The only real news is, after a consultation with the neurologist, we may get a CAT scan for dad's head. He's been scratching at it quite a lot, and there's a possibility of hemorrhaging, especially due to the blood thinners. If there is, we'll have to make a decision: keep the medicine and the hemorrhaging, or stop the medicine and get clots. My mom and I discussed, and we'll do whatever is quickest and the most painless.

A deadly accident on a nearby road may create a new law: that drivers *must* clear ice off their car before driving it.

I have personally chased down a police car and yelled and screamed at him to clear his roof. I did this while the guy from the glass place was replacing the window on the Taurus. patrixa was driving, and Deb - pregnant with Justin at the time - was sitting in the passenger seat. Some ice slid off the roof of a van on route 2 in Arlington/Lexington/Waltham MA area. The only reason my mom didn't crash was because she didn't believe the window was really broken.

It didn't break through, but in this accident, it only took an 8" piece of ice to crash through the window (looked like it peeled back some of the metal as well), kill a woman, and injure her son. The 18 wheeler - like the van in the incident in MA - did not stop.

If you can't clear your car of snow or ice, don't drive it. It's that simple.

... snow.

Yep. It is.

Visibility from |--> to about <--| give or take a little.

Deb has to take Brandon for his 15 month checkup. Rachel may be getting out earlier - all the schools around us have announced early dismissal, so it's likely she gets out early, or, at the least, has afternoon activities cancelled.

I'm working from home due to being breathing-impaired. Watching the progress meter on Washington State custom transcripts, hopefully the changes I've made fix the problem.

Justin's playing Ape Escape II, going for his second completion of it. Deb rented the game as a show of appreciation for his helping out a lot lately.

In the time I've been writing this, visibility decreased by about 100' or so.

The plow just came and cleared the street - they came by a couple of hours ago and gave it a first pass, but that was still about 30-40' from our driveway.

Speaking of which, I worked from home today, which was no fun. Today was my team lunch for December, and we were going to Applebees, and I've been dying for some BBQ ribs... mmmm, free food always tastes Even Betterer^TM than that which you pay for... Oh, well, I switched to the team lunch on the 21st, at Gregory's, a local steak place that is, IMO, overrated.

We cleared a single path down to the curb for the trash - which I don't think they've picked up yet, same guys on the trash crew and snow plow crew and all that - in the pre-dawn hours, and that took us well over an hour. The fact that snow was still falling at 2" an hour (according to the weatherman; seemed much faster than that) didn't help.

In all, we received 10-12", with drifts up to 4' - although those seem to be isolated to certain trees in the woods, most places didn't drift that bad.

We currently have about 2/3 of the driveway - roughly 6000 square feet of snow, with another 3000 to go, so, yeah, if you haven't seen my Amazon.com wish list, feel free to stop by and order the snowblower for us (it's a medium priority, but I might up that; if you sort by high cost to low cost, it will be near the top of the list! =) Justin, Deb, and I - not to mention the single shovel we continue to abuse despite it having died last Spring - will thank you greatly!

We have snow, by the way.

Just thought everyone should know.

We also forgot our only snow shovel mostly died last year.

Ooops.

In much happier news, I am about to eat some homemade pizza. Yum!

Tain't been updatin' much - but... another snow day! Just like last Friday. And last Monday. Aiii, there goes my personal holidays....

I'd work from home, but I still don't have the laptop - and unfortunately, Apple's OS 9.1 doesn't cut it for running any work related stuff.

Shoveled 2" last night, 6-8" today, on top of what ever was left from the 10" inches that fell over the course of last week. Still have to clear the top of the driveway off, taking shifts with Justin while I watch Brandon (who is currently napping.) For those of you who received more snow, please remember my driveway is somewhere between 300-400' long, and gravel, and anywhere from 15-30' wide, so even a soft fluffy skim of snow takes about 2-3 hours to clear (especially considering we have one shovel, which went into a coma last Monday, was revived after emergency surgery removed it's entire leading edge, and is currently languishing with a split front and center that has several pine needles and twigs jammed in it.)

Had a breakfast of Deeper n' Ever^TM scrambled eggs (12 eggs, 1 package bacon, 1/2 a block of cheddar cheese, tarragon vinegar, tarragon, chervil, fresh ground black pepper) between rounds of shoveling, and followed that up with a dessert of Vermont Snow (Pennsylvania snow topped with New Hampshire maple syrup) between more rounds.

A snow blower is in the budget in about 2-3 years. Has to be a two-stage (more $$) to clear the gravel. Of course, we need another load of gravel to top off the driveway - I'll have to look at the numbers and see if getting it paved isn't cheaper - the one quote for a truck load of gravel last year seemed to high to be believed and left me staggering in shock. Paving should make it quicker to shovel, and easier to use a snow blower on once we get one.

Just checked on the kids - Brandon is still out like a light, Rachel is walking around with handfuls of snow, and Justin is still doing some shoveling. I think he just might be nuts enough to try to finish the job so that he can play.

Took about 20 pics of the house and woods and kids today. That makes 3 rolls since late last year, when we found the still-packed-from-the-move camera. Have to get those over to Dan's for developing. Think I'll have to add a new category to the budget (maybe 0.25%) to save for a digital camera. I enjoy taking pictures - and I'm realizing how much I've missed it since we moved (and, of course, packing the camera in an easy-to-find spot that took us nearly 2 years to find!)

Snow forts are being constructed, Brandon's up, and so is Deb - long rambling update officially over! =)