White Power

The picture(s) to be added to this post will enhance the descriptive effect of my words. Anyway, the day after I arrived back home (I believe it all started Tuesday, but it could have been Wednesday), the snow, which I found to be my greatest enemy of the holidays, arrived. It snowed for two days without stopping. Escape was impossible even in the four wheel drive pickup truck. When the snow finally stopped, I decided to dig out the whole driveway and car parking area (I was visiting my family, it's the least I could do). I shoveled more than 2000 cubic feet of snow that day,at 8000+ feet in elevation, coming directly from a year spent at sea level. I was amazed I didn't faint or have a heart attack.

The same thing happened the next week. Another two days of snow. Another two feet of snow in the driveway (approximately. Some spots had more, some less). This time, though, I had been out in my Saturn when the snow started. Arriving home, the snow was too deep for my car to make it up the grade of the driveway, and I had to leave it sitting in the way. Luckily, it was far enough in from the road that my parents were able to pull their truck in behind it and out of the street. We tried to clear the snow away while it was still coming down, and while this might be a smart decision most other times, the snow was coming down too heavily to fix anything despite removing the at least eighteen inches of snow already accumulated. My father helped me shovel at least half of what was out there this second time.

To top it all off, it snowed again the last Friday I was in town there. Luckily, it was only a few inches, or I would have missed the last opportunity I had to meet up with my friends from back there for last/this year. At least I wasn't stuck at an airport for days at a time, trying to get somewhere for Christmas. I was, however, held hostage by the weather for six (more?) days.

Not that I'd have necessarily done anything all that interesting with the time, but it would have been an option. I did use a couple of those days to chisel off the nut holding one of the kitchen sink strainers and half fix the leak it was having. It would have been fixed entirely except the silicone sealant I tried to use was too old and did not provide a good enough seal.

Next up: Christmas

Very Far Behind

I am entirely too far behind in posting. There should have been a post about spending Thanksgiving with a friend and his family, drinking a bit of beer, eating a lot of very good food, and standing in the cold rain around a fire, but I neglected to write one. There should also have been an entry about watching the Jan Svankmajer film Otesánek (See it. There's a creepy old guy with a thing for a little girl, general obsession with children, a wooden doll that comes alive, and much more), but I failed to do that too.





There would have been an entry about Children of Men back around 30 November that was to have been titled something like "The Second Coming is as a Little Black Girl" (The movie was pretty good. Our heroes: hippies, a former activist unhappy in his new corporate/government job, and people who don't use guns. The potential savior of mankind is a baby black girl. The long takes are great), but, again, I waited too long for the ideas to remain fresh.

I probably should have put something down about the Christmas formal, Toys for Tots, or my birthday nights out, but that's not happening now either. I didn't fail any of my classes in the last semester, and that's about all that'll be said about the fin de semestre.

I went home for Christmas. I intended to write a post about the snow issues, among other things, and I think I still will. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. Two or three entries about my Christmas and New Year's doings are forthcoming and might even make it here before the new semester starts.