Tag: winter

Last Night’s Snow

We got some snow last night. The anticipation was enough to screw over my band practice, but in the end it wasn’t too bad. I don’t know what the official total was but it looked to be about 4-5 inches of really light snow.

When I woke up this morning I looked outside and thought to myself that I would clear off the driveway and the walkway and the fire hydrant after work. I did my morning exercise and ate breakfast and then thought I would maybe go out and shovel a path from the road to the door and leave the rest for after work.

It’s really cold out today so I dressed in a couple of layers and put on my snow boots like a good boy. I went out, fully planning to do just enough to let the mail man get to the mail box. Next thing I know, it was all done. All of the shoveling. The entire driveway, both cars, the path around the house to the back door, and the fire hydrant. All done. I did not start the cars so they still have a layer of ice. Other than that, it’s all done.

I suppose there is still a chance that the plows could come back and widen things, and that would leave a small snowbank at the end of the driveway and I’d have to deal with that. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m really pleased with myself for getting this done so early. It would have been on my mind all day otherwise. Like a dark cloud hanging over my head.

And yes, this post is just an example of me whistling past the graveyard. Expect a bunch of these kinds of posts today.

We’re Going to Fail Again, Aren’t We

The band practice is on the books for 4:00pm tomorrow. I should be super psyched.

I’m not.

We’re going to get slammed with a snowstorm tomorrow afternoon. Practice is going to get snowed out.

MUTHA PUSS BUCKET!

I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I swear that mother nature hates my guts. What a bitch!

First Time in Ages

I just did something that I don’t think I have done since before Covid came along and mussed everything up.

As previously mentioned, it’s snowing today. Not a lot. We have about an inch on the ground. We might get another inch on top of that, but by no means is today’s storm anything to be worried or upset about, other than the fact that snow is always a pain in the ass. We are New Englanders. This is nuttin’.

However, I needed to go out and do the grocery shopping. My wife has been eating super healthy lately and she was out of all of the healthy things she needed for lunch. I had to go out and restock so that she could have a good lunch. That means I had to go out to the store before the snow stopped. Not only that, I had to go out before the snow removal crews started working. In other words, I had to drive in the fresh, untreated snow.

As previously stated, that was not a big deal. There was enough snow to make the roads a little slippery, but not enough to cause any real troubles for an experienced snow-driver. It made me think though… when was the last time I went out before the plowing started? I can’t remember. It’s been a long, long time. The last time had to have been pre-Covid lockdown. There hasn’t been a time since then that I had to be somewhere bad enough that I couldn’t wait for at least the plows getting one whack in. The only thing I could think of that would have made me go out right away was if one of my parents were in the hospital. If that happened I must have blocked it out of my memory. There was the drive home from Vermont a few weeks ago… does that count? I think the side roads might not have been hit yet, but the main roads had. I don’t know.

So I guess all I did today was spiritually renew my New England Winter Driver ID card. Yeah. I can still drive in the snow. Yippee for me, babie.

Not Today

I was thinking of taking the new eBay camera out to shoot that long awaited test roll today. Maybe go to the Merrimack River or downtown or Forrest Lake. Anywhere, really.

Nope….

Not today. Friggin’ snow. Mother Nature just hates me, it’s obvious. I still have to go out and run a bunch of errands though. Friggin’ snow.

Jack Hammer

The temperature outside of my house right now is a balmy 18 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 14 degrees below freezing for our non-US, non-English temperature unit using readers. It’s really cold. The ground is completely frozen. It’s January 7th. It’s as Winter as you can get.

At this very moment there is a work crew jack hammering the street in front of our house. They are jack hammering all over the street. I think it’s something to do with upgrading the gas lines or something like that. The city sent us a notice about it months ago and at the time we thought, why the hell are they going to start a project like that in January? What the hell are they thinking? Have they never been in Massachusetts in January before? Everything will be frozen.

So yeah, we’ve got that jack hammering thing going for us as we start our work day today. Oh yeah, we also have a furniture delivery truck scheduled to show up within the next three hours or so… and the road is being dug up…

Nice. Ugh.

It’s Really Cold Out

Another freezing cold day here in Massachusetts. New England is in a deep freeze right now. At this moment I am sitting at my desk in the cellar with a heavy sweatshirt on, a space heater running, and an electric blanket draped over me.

Yeah, it’s cold.

I just want the air to be warm enough to let us go outside without it being painful. Is that too much to ask?

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Cold

I checked the weather when I woke up. It was about 6:30am. The outside temperature was a whopping nine degrees Fahrenheit. Lovely.

I went down cellar to start my day with a bottle of water and some morning exercise and the little room thermometer I keep down here said it was 58.7 degrees. Lovely.

Winter sucks. Winter blows.

First Day of Winter

Well… it’s winter again. Again. Literally winter, as opposed to the last three plus months which was figuratively winter. Literal winter runs from December to March. Here in New England, figurative winter runs from September 1st through sometime in late June. The upside of the first day of winter is that from now on the days start getting longer. The downside is that it’s going to get colder and more awful with each passing day, and it’s going to take so long for the days to get longer enough that it matters that it won’t make any real difference for months.

I hate winter.

December 21st puts us in the home stretch for xmas. I am still waiting for the amazonians to deliver a couple of things so the wrapping is still not complete. I have to go out and pick up a few things today as well. That includes some food supplies for xmas eve, xmas dinner, and our slightly delayed annual xmas eve party which happens on the Sunday after xmas this year. I also need to bring my work-holiday gift to my sister’s today so we can have it with xmas dinner.

I need to play guitar but there probably won’t be time for it. I need to go out and take pictures of stuff but the weather likely won’t let me. Ugh.

Lots to do, but I can’t do anything until I clean the tiny amount of snow we got yesterday off of the cars and the driveway. Ugh.

I hate winter. Remember that time a few years ago when we went to Florida in January and the weather was warm? Can we maybe do that again?

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Snow on the Way

It’s going to snow tonight. Crap. I was going to see if Jen and Harry wanted to go for a drive to look at xmas lights, but now I just want to pull a blanket over my head and hide until the weather clears. I mean, winter officially starts at like 4:00am tomorrow morning. It’s bound to snow eventually. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I did a couple of goofy things with this little bloggie today. This post will serve as a bit of a test for one of them. I added a couple of new share buttons. Bluesky and Threads (and Mastodon? Did I add that one too?) are new, and Tumblr was re-added after being removed at least once. I removed twitter/x as well because fuck that musk prick. Fuck him right in his fucking eye. I tested the Bluesky and Threads buttons and they work. I also set new posts to automatically post to Bluesky. When I publish this literary tome I will see if it worked.

Another change, which is internal and should only be viewable by me, is that I think I hooked up to Google Analytics. I’ve had that option for ages now but I never did it. I am at heart a stats geek, so why didn’t I? It seems like I am too late as my engagement stats (the ones built into wordpress.com) are down something like 70% since they peaked back in February. Allow me to make the same caveat I make every time I mention this page’s stats… I really don’t care about the stats, I am just a numbers nerd and like to mess around with them. Also, and definitely most importantly, being down 70% from a very small, some might say microscopic, number is just another small, microscopic, number, dig it? This is not one of those blogs that sees a gajillion hits an hour. I consider myself lucky when I average one hit an hour and in my experience that would be a lot. In other words, I am in no way interested in drumming up business with insipid brain droppings, dig? Like I said twice before in this post, I just like playing with numbers. I have a Computer Science degree for cripes sake. Numbers are fun. Whatever, I am curious if linking up to Google Analytics a) worked, and b) will show me anything fun. I’ll probably write 100000 posts about it over the next few days (assuming it worked, of course).

All of these changes are internal but they might be a hint that a bloggie shake up is coming, and you know what that means… that means I am probably going to start messing with the theme and the layout. Sometimes Robert just cannot stop himself, you know?

What the hell was I talking about? I can’t remember. Oh yeah, it’s going to snow tonight. Doesn’t that suck? I think that sucks.

Oh well. I am going to click Publish now. Here’s hoping we cross post over to the ol’ Bluesky Social. Wish the bloggie luck……….