Tag: winter

Nothing is Impossible

We had an ice storm on Friday followed by two days of seriously cold weather. Everything outside is frozen solid. Unfortunately we are also in lock down like a couple of lab rats. What does that mean?

That means that I didn’t scrape off the cars when the ice storm hit. We’re supposed to get a few days of warm and rainy weather this week so I was going to let mother nature take care of the cars for us. I knew that was a bad move from a safety point of view but I was going to let it slide. Every time I looked out the window I saw the Mazda at the end of the driveway and a little voice in the back of my head whispered, “stop being a moron, go scrape the car.”

We’re supposed to have our furnace inspected today and there is still that layer of frozen snowy mix on the driveway as well as the cars, so I was already planning on spreading a little rock salt on the driveway to help with the footing. I figured I’d stop being a moron and scrape the windows on the car at the end of the driveway while I was there.

Now if you live in a cold, snowy, icy place like New England you are probably aware that clearing a quarter inch of ice off of a car’s windows after three days of settlin’ in is generally considered to be impossible.

Well I just proved that nothing is impossible. I cleared the ice off of the windows like a boss, and it only cost me one broken ice scraper and about 30 minutes of my life.

In other words… don’t wait three days after an ice storm like this moron I know did.

Sunday Morning Stuff

The plow guy did a great job. He only did our driveway, not the section of the yard that doubles as the kids driveway, but that’s okay. Those cars aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. He did a path from the driveway to the stairs on the side of the house which gains him the title of Hero++. That’s one rank higher than hero. He didn’t do the fire hydrant, but we didn’t ask him to. I went out and did it about an hour ago. Done and done.

I have some laundry to do today. I checked the dryer vent on the back of the house. It’s clear. We are all set to wash the sheets and stuff. Aren’t you happy to hear that little snippet of good news? I’m just a fountain of knowledge today.

The episode of The Mandalorian that introduces Ashoka Tano is so freakin’ good. The episode that reintroduces Boba Fett is almost as good. When he smashes the stormtrooper’s helmet with the gaffey stick? It’s like poetry, man.

Did I mention that the RPM Challenge starts the day after tomorrow? As if I haven’t been boring the crap out of everyone with music posts. Get ready for more, kids!

And that’s where we are at 12:09pm on a random Sunday.

But wait, there’s more! Just before I hit publish Bellana called. We had a FaceTime and it was lovely. Apparently our Dutch friends like to put mayonnaise on French Fries. I don’t know… I don’t know if I can get behind that trend. We’ll see.

Snowpocalypse: The Aftermath

The National Weather Service told my beloved wife Jennifer that Methuen, Massachusetts got about 14 inches of snow yesterday. That’s a good number. Anything over a foot is noteworthy, really. It’s nowhere near what the worst doom and gloom forecasts called for (I did see one that predicted 30 inches), but it’s still a decent haul.

We lived to tell the tale. The tale being Jen played lots of World of Warcraft, I finished an album and watched a lot of The Mandalorian, we ate a frozen pizza for dinner and then watched a disturbing amount of BravoTV. We never lost power. I don’t know if anyone in Methuen did, but I know a lot of people in MA lost theirs for a while. We stayed lit.

So now what? We booked a plow to come and dig us out. Normally on the day after a storm we spend most of the day wondering when they are going to show up. Wondering if they are going to show up. I was planning on writing a big paragraph about that but about half an hour ago he showed up! He’s still out there, but he’s packing up. It was one guy with a pickup truck with a plow and a snowblower and a shovel in the back. We booked it online through plowzandmowz which is your typical gig-economy service app. We didn’t talk to the guy directly, but I think we can all agree that the dude is a friggin hero!

I still need to do some shoveling. He cleared one drive way, but we sort of have two. He took the snowbank off of the end of both rows so the hard part is done. I need to shovel around the kids cars. I don’t know if I am going to bother brushing them off. It’s going to be six weeks before Harry needs his car, and six months before Bellana needs hers. Also, the forecast for the second half of this coming week is calling for warm and rainy. The cars are going to clean themselves off. I want to clear around them though, on the off chance we need to get inside one of them. I haven’t checked the path to the door on the side of the house. We usually ask for that but it rarely gets done. No big whoop. Finally, there’s a fire hydrant in front of our house. I need to get that.

Other than that? Barring any freak power line accidents or anything like that, I think we can put snowpocalypse 2022 to bed. Let’s close the book on this one and move on with our frosty cold New England lives.

I am going to watch another episode of The Mandalorian. This is the way, eh?

Signs Point to a Rough Day

Last night, just before I was about to turn in for the night, I had a muscle spasm, or a cramp, or something in my gut that hurt like it hurts when a meteor crashes into your face. Oh my goodness, did that little sucker (whatever it was) hurt like 10 shades of hellish suck.

I’ve had this happen 2-3 times over the past 10-15 years and each time it is about 5-10 minutes of nightmare*. I don’t know what to do to relieve the pain so I get up and try to walk it off. That doesn’t help at all, but at least I am doing something. After a few minutes the pain calms down but whatever muscle is being the asshole is still twitching. Just as I start thinking I might be okay it fires up again and the whole thing starts over. After that it’s done. Last night the whole thing lasted less than 10 minutes and then I was able to lie down and sleep.

So that’s the first sign that today might suck. Here’s the second.

Last night I wrote a post saying that it was going to be horribly cold out this morning. The forecast was right. It is currently six degrees out. I should be happy that I put the barrels out last night and don’t need to go outside today, right?

We got a dusting of snow overnight. We have a grocery delivery coming this morning. I need to put ice melt down so the instacart person doesn’t slip. After all that shit last night, I still have to go outside this morning.

Here’s hoping that’s the last bad thing and that the rest of the day goes smoothly. Pretty please with sugar on top.

*That sentence is my attempt to use the most “-” characters in a single sentence ever. Did I set a new world record? Do we need to call the Guinness folks?

I Don’t Like Winter

It’s cold out tonight. I need to take the trash barrels out to the street for pick up tomorrow. I can do it tonight before bed, or I can get up a few minutes early tomorrow and do it then. I looked at the weather complication on my watch and it told me it was 24 degrees out. Damn, that’s cold. I hate cold. I looked up the forecast for the morning and… took the barrels out tonight.

It’s going down to single digits tonight. The forecast is calling for seven degrees at 8:00am tomorrow.

Hot damn, that’s cold.

Sand Trucks and Car Music

I did the first car music of 2022 today. Yippee and Hooray and stuff. I put vocals onto both Record Every Month songs for January and one re-recording of a song from 2010 or 2011 or something. I had to write new lyrics for that one because the original lyrics were garbage. The new lyrics are garbage too, but slightly less garbagey garbage if that makes any sense.

I hate to have to admit this but I have written the same song twice again. I sense a theme for the coming RPM Challenge. One song over and over again. The last time I did it, it was an E minor – A minor thing that I used in two songs. This time it was an E minor 7 – B minor 7 – A dominate 7 thing that I used in the chorus of both songs.

I suck.

I should also mention that the singing was pretty terrible as well. Also, there were two trucks. Ugh. We had snow two days ago and there’s been a little freezing rain this morning. There was a plow and a sander in the parking lot with me. I think the sander covered the entire lot at least twice. He kept driving by me while I was trying to sing and the mic kept picking it up. As if my own voice wasn’t shit enough. The plow… what the hell, bro? He kept plowing little sections of the parking lot even though the snow has been gone for almost two days now. What the hell was he plowing, and why did he have to keep doing it over and over?

No Methuen Center pics today. Instead you’ll have to settle for this one. It was cold out side and very shouty inside. Hence the foggy.

As I was writing this I saw a Tweet announcing that Michael Lang died. He was 77. If you don’t know who Michael Lang is, he was one of the guys who put on the Woodstock festival. If only he’d thought otherwise about Woodstock ’95 and ’99 or whatever the hell years they were. Pretty much the definition of too much of a good thing. Rest in Peace, Mr Lang.

One Crazy Friday

It’s 3:59pm and I am more or less free to break for lunch for the first time. What a day!

The kids are back to their dad’s for the weekend. It’s sad. Bellana will be coming over for some of the weekend so that’s good, but she’s off to study abroad next week so that’s sad but it’s also happy. This empty nest stuff just messes with my head in the worst ways.

I did a little shoveling this morning. Bellana did more. She was able to make it to her appointment and everything went safe and well. I expected that she and Harry would have to do some shoveling so they could get out to head to dad’s but wouldn’t you know it, some guy was going door to door asking to shovel driveways. If he wants to do it, then go for it. I had enough cash on hand to pay him, so off he went. He didn’t do all that great a job, but every snow flake he moved is one that I don’t have to move so it’s a win for me regardless. Also, who still carries cash? What’s the matter with you, Robert? Get with the 21st century, would ya?

91 minutes until the weekend. I can make it, I know I can. Here’s hoping I get to play a lot of guitar over the next couple of days. Every time it snows I feel like I should play to balance out the snow hate with some music love. Just keep me right in the middle, like lukewarm water*.

*If you haven’t seen This is Spinal Tap then we really can’t be friends. I mean, we can still relate on some level, but we really can’t be besties or anything like that.