Dear Prudence,

The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beatiful, the snow is melting, WOO!

Okay, so I ripped off the Beatles, but it's true. The snow is melting. Finally. My neighbours that put their Christmass trees out between December 31 and January 5 can now how them taken away. The lovely firs are no longer hidden under 5 feet of white ice and dirt. That means the trash (wo)men can do the pickup either this week or next. Lucky for me, we didn't have a tree. My only thing to put out is the branches that fell from the dogwood in the yard. Sweet!

As of right now, I don't have any "recent" pictures, except for February 4th, when I went out to shovel a walk from the side of the driveway to my back yard, so we can get oil delivered. Lemme tell you, that was an adventure. It took me a total of 6 hours and 2 days. Three hours into the first day, I'm like "I can't go on; I've only done 20 feet and it's dark out!" It was. I was shovelling snow that was waist height in some places and had to go at least 60 feet to the back of the house. Yes, it's not alot, but when it's all frozen, thick, and nasty, it takes a while. I had to use a metal garden rake, a metal shovel, and an ice chipper to properly get a normal shovel width's path. Hence it taking so long. Was not fun. But in the end, when we got oil delivered, the guy couldn't thank us enough. He said that no one has done something as elaborate as this, and it's really appreciated because alot of people hadn't even listened to their queries about doing something. Too bad we didn't get a discount....

Well, I shall post another update soon. But the heater is calling me; it may look nice outside, but my office is still feeling below zero with the heater on high.

Cheers,

Snow update

Snowdate: January 27, 2011.
Snow fall (accumulated total to date): around 65 inches (5 ½ feet) (give or take an inch or two of melting).

The following pictures take place on the afternoon of January 27. The pictures where the camera is high (i.e. the one looking towards the street and a car is in the picture on the bottom), I am standing on a 7½ foot high snow mound in my driveway. The pictures that are in the back yard are from the same view point (I just turned around). The last picture is in my driveway, across my front yard. You can see the bushes are completely covered (there is a tree a little off centre in the back ground... that tree is surrounded by shrubbery. Or it was).

And yet, we're expected to get more snow this weekend. Another foot or more. There's no where to put it; my double wide driveway (roughly 4 car drive) is now a car and a half driveway.

Roofs are collasping all around the state from the weight of the snow. The icicles hanging from our roof, have their own icicles. Even those ones have their own! This winter is surely the bane of everyone's existence.

Given most cities are currently going into debt from the snow removal, theyre still doing a good job cleaning streets when they can. Boston had several million dollars to their name in the snow removal fund. I think now, as it stands, they are scurrying to borrow money from other funds because the storms we've had (4), completely tore a hole into that fund and drained the hell out of it. The same goes with alot of other major cities. My city has gotten into a jam as well. We get "thundersnow", so that's 3-6 more inches an hour. Fun times!

So the main question is...Who's ready to move?