Chipping away

[mmcirvin]

The past week has been exhausting--on top of work, commuting and the baby, there's dealing with all the snow that was dumped on us on Valentine's Day. This was deceptive in that it was far from the deepest snow we've gotten in the area, maybe 10 inches in Haverhill at the outside. But it was icy, sleety stuff that quickly transformed into a rocklike mass, and the snowstorm came at an inopportune time of day, snowing all day and well into the night so that it was impossible to get a head start on it while the sun shone. Then there was a series of incredibly cold, windy days that left everything frozen really hard and made it impossible to shovel after sunset.

I stupidly left my car parked on the street. I thought I was being a good citizen by at least following the alternate-side-of-street rule correctly, but nobody else did, so the snowplows had to swerve around. My car ended up almost completely buried in a mound of this icy stuff, pushed up around it and made even harder by the plows. I spent a couple of days just chipping away at this mound, which kept me from getting around to the rest of what I needed to clear.

To make matters worse, we were scheduled to get our new washer and dryer delivered on Valentine's Day. The delivery people rescheduled for the next day, but there was no conceivable way we could get a path to the basement bulkhead door cleared of snow and ice in time for them to come, and when they did show up, they couldn't or wouldn't manage it (I don't blame them). They're coming back on Tuesday and we've cleared out what I hope is an adequate path. I also spent today clearing out an approach to the mailbox, per the peeved flyer that the Postal Service left.

Sam's feeling guilty about our laggard treatment of all this, but I don't really see how we could have done any better; even a snowblower would be useless on this stuff. It's not that heavy, but removing it is an exhausting matter of chipping the compressed snow into portable blocks that leaves your arms sore for days. I could have put my car in the driveway beforehand, and I guess I could have stayed outside for the entire duration of the storm and shoveled the snow away continuously as it fell, but that's all I can figure.

Comments

[alice-q.livejournal.com]

I had to deal with much less of it here in Connecticut; the compressed ice-snow mass is about 2 inches thick. Fortunately, my driveway gets morning sun, so, between that and the wind during the storm, I didn't have to excavate the car. However, any actual clearing of surfaces involves using a heavy ice chipper to fracture the ice, then a shovel to clear it away. And to make things worse, my shovel is plastic, and it's hard to work its edge under any loosened ice-snow. And the whole routine works best when the temperature has been above freezing for a few hours. I dealt with my front steps and the plow piles Wednesday night. Today, I finally finished the walkway from the driveway to the front of the house and got started on the sidewalk. The actual rate of clearance is on the order of 1/2 hour for 4 to 6 square feet (not feet squared!). So, I feel your pain.

[jarai.livejournal.com]

Matt, I'm pretty sure you don't need to feel guilty about the weather.

[manfire.livejournal.com]

Matt McIrvin, I had this weird dream last night in which I had an argument with you. I argued that the perceived human consciousness moves in spirals around the field of vision, as sort of expressed by Michael Shermer in his debunking of near-death experiences. You angrily disagreed with me and said that perceived human consciousness moves in an X shape around the center of the field of vision, as evinced in Haidinger's brushes. I just wanted to let you know that for some reason my brane thought that you were the brainiac that it would be perfect for me to have such a silly argument with. Isn't that wacky?

Your pal,
JM

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

This is what would have happened if analytic philosophy had arisen in the Altered State of Drugachusetts.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, the roads were in pretty good shape, considering everything that went down. On the evening of the 14th, while the stuff was still falling, I cleared out some of the snow from the driveway and made sure Sam's car was free, so I could actually use that the next day.

They'd plowed out all the major highways to some extent (the Boston area has pretty heroic snow removal, all told), and by the time I went to work, 495 and 93 were clear. The big problem there was just the aftereffects of a rash of accidents that had happened hours earlier when the roads were slicker: the bridge in Lawrence actually had an overturned semi on the right shoulder and the right lane was shut down, occupied by two cranes that had been brought in to right it. (There was an electronic sign up the road indicating that the left lane was closed, which was Not Helping.)

95 still had some lumpy hard snow on it near my office, though, and it was slow because there were big front-end loaders still trying to plow it out in the middle of traffic. I saw a crippled loader near an onramp that had somehow gotten a flat tire.