Thinking Out Loud » snow

It was fun, but(t)…

Lee — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:52:36 +0000

Santa left some snow sliding saucers for Tasha and Ben for Christmas. And of course they needed to be tested as soon as possible. Fortunately, there’s a hill close by to Graham and Ivy’s house that was built especially for that purpose. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you that one part of the hill is almost suicidal.

That’s the hill I wanted. And up I went, and then down I went, with Tasha on board. Apparently, according to Graham, “You guys sure caught a lot of air when you went over that bump!” I don’t know about that, because we were coming down the hill backwards incredibly fast, and I couldn’t turn the damn thing around. When we hit the bump, all I knew was there was nothing under me for a long time, and suddenly there was. I have a bruise on my butt the size of a basketball, and I’m pretty sure I re-broke the same rib I broke a couple of years ago. Anyway, we moved over to the semi-bunny hill (safer for young ones AND old bones)

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Things you see on a smoke break

Lee — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:19:34 +0000

I’m at work today. I just got in from a smoke break (my second for the day, and it’s almost 2:oo pm. – that’s pretty good for me) and I saw something I had to write down here.

The smoking area is in the back parking lot, and you can see the street where a lot of the people park to go to the casino. I watched a couple of older couples (does that make sense) walking to their car. In typical senior fashion, the two men were walking side by side, and the two women trailed along three or four steps behind. When they got to their car, the two ladies jumped into the back seat, and the two men got in the front.

It’s not their fault, because the snow removal plan is a little lacking, but it was soon obvious they were stuck. The guys got out to push, and one of the ladies got in the front to drive. Unfortunately, co-ordination seemed to be a stumbling block. One of the gents went to the back of the car, the other went to the front. And they both started to push. Despite this marvelous effort, the car was still not moving.

In a couple of minutes, the lady wound down the window, and I imagine she told them they should both push from the same end. The men accepted this idea, and both of them walked to the other end. The key word is BOTH. Not one. BOTH of them walked to the other end.

They were once again pushing against each other with all their might. and the car still wasn’t going anywhere. I could see the woman waving her arms at the one at the front, and I’m just thinking here, telling him he should go to the back where his helper is. I’m pretty sure there was a remark about lack of intelligence I could hear even from my viewpoint, but I’m not positive.

I was just about to walk across the street to help out (after all, there was still two free sides to the car that I could push against) when a group of teenagers came along and basically lifted the car out of the ruts.

Aw well, back to work.

We did NOT have a blizzard

Lee — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:35:52 +0000

It snowed for two days. I called it a blizzard. According to environment Canada though, if I understood the weather report, we were having a heavy snow fall. You need to have falling snow, winds over 50 km/hr and extreme cold weather and wind chill. It was actually only about -5 degrees, so we didn’t qualify. But our heavy snowfall (read blizzard here – my opinion) did close all of the highways, and pretty much made driving in the city impossible.

Here’s some photos:

where's the car

My car is under there someplace.

My back driveway

Too cold to be outside

Lee — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:54:06 +0000

So I’m stuck inside having fun doing some digital artwork. So what do I draw?

Something warm and tropical one would think, but I decided on snow. Here’s the WonderDog goofing around.

Snow Bandit

A lot of snow!

Lee — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:56:52 +0000

They said it was gonna snow yesterday, and they were right.

I always like the first snowfall of the year. I’m not sure why. I even like the cooler temperatures, and don’t miss the sunny, warm (hot, in my opinion) summer days. There’s something about the crisp feeling on my face, or maybe it’s the fresh, clean smell of the air in general. As I’ve said before, autumn and early winter are my favourite times of the year.

It’s a good thing I got all of the goldfish inside two days ago. They are tough little critters, but I doubt they could have survived a pool of slush.

Bandit feels the same way about the snow. I’m sure it’s my imagination, but I’m positive his eyes get bigger in a happy surprise, and he turns into a 3-month old puppy running around in circles and rolling in the fresh white snow. And, as you can see, since he’s a real “man-dog” one of the first requirements is to write you name in the snow.

The tree in the picture below is folded in half by the weight of the snow. The branches don’t usually hang down like that. In fact, all of the trees in my yard are bent with the weight of the snow. I have a weeping birch that was about 7 feet tall, and it was squashed down to about 2 1/2 feet. When I brushed the snow off of it, it stretched out to about four feet tall.

I’m going out right now to find my snow shovel and clear the sidewalks. I’ll add some more photos later on today.