Snow ain't what it used to be.
When I was a kid it would snow as early as Halloween, last through March, and be so deep that you could tunnel under it. Now it's lucky to snow before Christmas, last through February, or be deep enough to matter. I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. The good news is that I won't have to move to Arizona any time soon. The bad news is that lack of snow now means lack of water later.
This year, our first snow happened today. I know this because I had to scrape it off my car after work...
It won't last.
Which means it's only here long enough to be irritating.
What else is new.
When you wake up to the sound of snowplows scraping the street, it's more difficult than usual to get out of bed. Obviously it snowed last night, could still be snowing, and that means the roads are going to suck.
Except it turns out it wasn't snow, it was rain. Which was freezing over the snow and ended up creating an icy crust all over the roads... and my car. This made driving to work a bit of an ordeal because everybody was sliding on shards of ice...
Tonight it's snowing again, so tomorrow there will be snow on ice on snow.
That's something to look forward to.
In other news, I've put my good-bye letter to BlackBerry and RIM in an extended entry...
Hey! Avitable and I are helping The Muskrat raise money to fight prostate cancer during Movember... and giving YOU a chance to win an amazing prize package! Read all about it in yesterday's entry!
The weather on the mountain passes was so good this morning that I headed home a day early. Seeing "no restrictions with bare roads" on the WSDOT report was a far cry from the winter storm warnings that were in effect just a few days ago...
And I'm home.
Hopefully that will be my last trip of the year.
I hate snow.
Actually, that's not true. Snow is pretty. And you can do fun stuff in it.
What I really hate is the people who make me hate the snow. Which is just about everybody... but mostly the people who are driving in it. Like the moron I followed home after work who was driving 5mph in a 25mph zone. Never mind that the snow wasn't even sticking to the road and the biggest danger was getting your tires wet... IT'S SNOWING! SO YOU HAVE TO DRIVE 20MPH UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT OR EVERYBODY DIES!
But worse than those people are the people who drive 45mph in a 25mph zone when the snow is falling like gangbusters and the road is so slick with ice that it's all you can do to keep from sliding off it. Inevitably these are the assholes who end up behind me, grinding on my bumper as I try to survive the drive home.
Too slow for conditions. Too fast for conditions. You just can't win when it comes to snow.
Anway... can you guess what happened today?
Couldn't this have waited until AFTER I fly out on Friday?
Of course not! You just can't win when it comes to snow.
It's snowing like crazy in the Cascades. Again.
I am so done with snow now. But it sure makes flying over the mountains pretty...
But my concern is driving over the mountains. With the passes all messed up, I'm cut off from civilization.
By car, anyway.
Stupid expensive plane tickets.
It takes me 5 minutes to drive home. I ended up stopping half-way because the snow accumulation on my windshield was so thick that the wipers stopped working. That's pretty bad. Then again, on the way to work I saw one car in the ditch and two others smashed on a street corner. That's really bad.
Once I finally made it home, I was done with snow.
Until I decided to walk to the cemetery and see if there was enough light to take a few photos...
And now I'm done with snow.
Well, apparently it's totally winter now.
Don't you hate it when it's snowing so hard that by the time you get to cleaning off the back-end of your car, the front-end where you started is covered in snow again?
Yeah, me too. But that didn't stop this from being my post-work super-fun activity this evening...
Snow blows. But it sucks too. It pretty much sucks and blows.
Which, unfortunately, doesn't cancel each other out as you'd expect it too.
I don't want to live in a universe where stupid snow doesn't adhere to the laws of physics.
Despite living with snowy winters most of my life, I can never seem to get used to that first snowfall.
Eventually I become accustomed the weather and it doesn't bother me that much. But today?
In the morning when going to work...
At night when going back home...
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
Why can't they make no-stick snow coatings for cars?
When I woke up and looked out the window this morning it was snowing. This was disappointing, because I was hoping to participate in One Day Without Shoes (helping to remind people of kids living in poverty who can't afford footwear). HELPFUL HINT TO ORGANIZERS: Might have been a good idea to pick a date closer to summer so those living in North North America can participate.
And so my day was already off to a bad start with the weather, but that wasn't good enough. Irony had to rear its ugly head. My body decided to have an angioedema attack for the second day in a row, where the bottoms of my feet had swollen so badly that getting my feet into shoes was a painful prospect. So, to sum things up...
And so I overdosed on antihistamines (again) which ended up giving me an upset stomach, which resulted in me puking my guts out, which meant I ended up having to take more antihistamines, which made me sleepy, which meant I had to drink Red Bull, which caused me to have an upset stomach. And so on.
My entire day ended up being a vicious circle of cause and effect.
And here at the end of my day, it's no different. The never-ending battle to stay healthy enough to work while staying awake enough not to drop into a coma has taken its toll, and I'm pretty much dead. Whether I'm dead enough to get a decent night's sleep remains to be seen. But I'm hopeful.
It's Bullet Sunday on the second-shortest day of the year!
• Weekly. I know it's not a special number or anything... but I've done A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO of these things? Holy crap, WHY? Surely I have better things to do on a Sunday? Okay, I probably don't... but I really should.
• Sadly. Brittany Murphy died today. I know that she was made fun of quite a lot... they even had a parody of her on SNL... but I liked Brittany. She had a character type she was good at playing, and she played it very well. I loved her as "Tai" in Clueless. I really loved her as "Luanne" in King of the Hill.
I find it sad that she wasn't appreciated a little more as an actress while she was alive. She had some great roles. And yet the only press she could get recently was rumor-mongering about her getting fired from a movie. And few people seem to remember that she was also a singer who had a hit single with Paul Oakenfold...
Of course, much of the stuff I've heard from Oakenfold sounds exactly the same, but I think she did okay with her part.
I wish she would have stuck around and done more. Rest in peace.
• Slowly. Why won't this douchebag just die already? Slowly. In an agony equal to that which he has inflicted on an unwilling populace. I know I'm only furthering his cause here, but holy shit! Exactly how much of this joke can we be expected to take? When Chelsea Lately christened the wanker and his equally ridiculous wife "Herpes Simplex One" and "Herpes Simplex Two" I thought it was a funny gag. But Chelsea totally nailed it. They never go away. They just keep hanging around and infecting people with their stupid antics. And now he's got an album coming out?
It's incomprehensible how anybody could still be giving a shit about morons like this.
Myself included.
• Barely. It didn't snow today like it was supposed to. In fact, I think it drizzled rained more than it snowed, and there was barely any precipitation at all. I think that New England took it all instead. While I'm sorry for everybody who's having to shovel their way out this afternoon, I am grateful it's not me this time.
Annnnnnnd... I'm spent.
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
