Enough is Enough
Jan. 8th, 2004 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI'm ready for the big thaw, now. Really.
Got up at 7:45 this morning to walk![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy out to the main drag to catch a bus downtown, since she had to go to work today. That was fun. I crunched through the ice-crusted snow for three blocks, trusty walking stick (by which I mean "the handle of a mop we're throwing out unscrewed from the mop head") in hand. I broke trail for snippy, who followed in my footsteps (literally). That was slow, hard work. And the most treacherous places to walk were the places where someone had shoveled the walk, followed closely by areas where the snow had been trampled into a hard glaze by previous pedestrians. We made our way mostly along the edge of the street, between trees and parked cars, where the snow was at least unbroken; a good stiff footstep crunched through, making a nice secure foothold. We got out to Hawthorne just in time for her to cross the street and catch the bus she needed. God knows how long she'd have had to wait if she'd missed that one. Then I turned around and returned home, following my trail of tiny, neat round holes in the snow.
Later this afternoon, I went back outside with the intention of excavating the car and putting chains on it (it's been sitting idle since Monday evening). But I decided that the ice and snow covered concrete steps and stoop needed attention more. Of course, that required getting a shovel, which required getting into the garage, which required digging away the ice and snow blocking swing-up garage door*, which required grabbing a short piece of lumber from the back porch with which to do this. By the time I'd accomplished all that and cleared off the porch and steps, I decided that digging out the car could wait. Still, while I was doing all this I could hear drizzling water--a good sign. Some of the ice and snow is melting away.
It's 11:13 p.m. as I write this, and when I looked outside a minute ago, I could hear drizzling water as ice on the roof and gutters of our house and the house next door continues to melt. (It's 36 degrees farenheit in Portland currently.) But there's still a hell of a lot of icy snow covering everything. And there's freezing rain to the east, which might reach Portland, though that isn't certain. The KGW weatherman** says it should be at least 35 degree tomorrow and in the forties (the FORTIES! on Saturday. Yay! Perhaps we'll be able to get out to a party on Saturday night as planned after all.
But. Still. It'll likely get cold enough in the wee hours of the morning to freeze again. Which won't make the commute any easier, assuming I do commute. I worked Monday, and every day since the office has been closed. The Portland schools have already announced that they'll be closed tomorrow, so I expect our office will be too (we generally follow the Portland schools). Which means another day off. Which is nice in a way, but I've had about as much inclement weather as I can take over the last few days.
Plus, we're getting down to the snack-y stuff in the kitchen cupboards and refrigerator at this point. All the major meal ingredients have been consumed. (I even raided our emergency food stash for a few cans of soup and stew...but, heck, this sort of thing is why we have it.) I think tomorrow, especially if it warms up above freezing, I'll have to dig the car out, put the chains on it, and drive over to the grocery store. Not that we don't have food, but our diet is getting kinda monotonous at this point.
*If you're wondering why the car wasn't in the garage, that's because the garage is behind the house, and it would require taking the car up the driveway past the house, making a sharp right-angle turn, in order to get into the garage--and doing the reverse to get out again. Always assuming, of course, that the garage wasn't full of old furniture and tools and all the other fun detritus of home ownership.
**As opposed to The Weatherman (tm) from Bewitched, who didn't just report the weather--he made the weather.
Got up at 7:45 this morning to walk
snippy out to the main drag to catch a bus downtown, since she had to go to work today. That was fun. I crunched through the ice-crusted snow for three blocks, trusty walking stick (by which I mean "the handle of a mop we're throwing out unscrewed from the mop head") in hand. I broke trail for snippy, who followed in my footsteps (literally). That was slow, hard work. And the most treacherous places to walk were the places where someone had shoveled the walk, followed closely by areas where the snow had been trampled into a hard glaze by previous pedestrians. We made our way mostly along the edge of the street, between trees and parked cars, where the snow was at least unbroken; a good stiff footstep crunched through, making a nice secure foothold. We got out to Hawthorne just in time for her to cross the street and catch the bus she needed. God knows how long she'd have had to wait if she'd missed that one. Then I turned around and returned home, following my trail of tiny, neat round holes in the snow.Later this afternoon, I went back outside with the intention of excavating the car and putting chains on it (it's been sitting idle since Monday evening). But I decided that the ice and snow covered concrete steps and stoop needed attention more. Of course, that required getting a shovel, which required getting into the garage, which required digging away the ice and snow blocking swing-up garage door*, which required grabbing a short piece of lumber from the back porch with which to do this. By the time I'd accomplished all that and cleared off the porch and steps, I decided that digging out the car could wait. Still, while I was doing all this I could hear drizzling water--a good sign. Some of the ice and snow is melting away.
It's 11:13 p.m. as I write this, and when I looked outside a minute ago, I could hear drizzling water as ice on the roof and gutters of our house and the house next door continues to melt. (It's 36 degrees farenheit in Portland currently.) But there's still a hell of a lot of icy snow covering everything. And there's freezing rain to the east, which might reach Portland, though that isn't certain. The KGW weatherman** says it should be at least 35 degree tomorrow and in the forties (the FORTIES! on Saturday. Yay! Perhaps we'll be able to get out to a party on Saturday night as planned after all.
But. Still. It'll likely get cold enough in the wee hours of the morning to freeze again. Which won't make the commute any easier, assuming I do commute. I worked Monday, and every day since the office has been closed. The Portland schools have already announced that they'll be closed tomorrow, so I expect our office will be too (we generally follow the Portland schools). Which means another day off. Which is nice in a way, but I've had about as much inclement weather as I can take over the last few days.
Plus, we're getting down to the snack-y stuff in the kitchen cupboards and refrigerator at this point. All the major meal ingredients have been consumed. (I even raided our emergency food stash for a few cans of soup and stew...but, heck, this sort of thing is why we have it.) I think tomorrow, especially if it warms up above freezing, I'll have to dig the car out, put the chains on it, and drive over to the grocery store. Not that we don't have food, but our diet is getting kinda monotonous at this point.
*If you're wondering why the car wasn't in the garage, that's because the garage is behind the house, and it would require taking the car up the driveway past the house, making a sharp right-angle turn, in order to get into the garage--and doing the reverse to get out again. Always assuming, of course, that the garage wasn't full of old furniture and tools and all the other fun detritus of home ownership.
**As opposed to The Weatherman (tm) from Bewitched, who didn't just report the weather--he made the weather.