Snow Dump

The days started by busting loose from a big, thick sleep. Last night I was lulled to sleep peacefully by Joe Bowen amidst the epic collapse of my beloved Leafs. Luckily I didn’t have to hear the final moments and instead faded off into a full night of sleep and rest. When I woke up my heart was broken and my driveway was filled with snow. A lot of snow! We got over a foot of the white stuff and the trickery of the wind made it deeper in my driveway. The plow helped with that also by folding over a nice wave of sintered snow. I was not excited to take that one. First it was imperative to start the day with a hearty breakfast since I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had a lighter morning and felt like I was obligated to clear out the driveway and make the sidewalk passable for all the people needing to get out and exercise. The breakfast went off as planned, the usual fare. It looked extra good today so while it was cooling I snapped a picture.

When the feeding and cleaning was done I ventured out to work on the driveway. It was windy and blustery and I knew that more snow would trickle in but I wanted to make a start of it, primarily to clear the sidewalk. I’m not sure why that was such a priority but it HAD to be done no matter what. I worked away for thirty or forty minutes and I had cleared a path to the sidewalk and then a path down the middle of it across my property to the neighbour’s drive on either side. I was beat, turns out inactivity affects your stamina for phyical endeavours. I was about to pack it in and saw lady down the way was stuck in the end of the driveway. She didn’t properly shovel the sintered snow and got her car hung up. One of those “I have all wheel drive, I can do anything people”. That’s now fair, she was nice enough, just didn’t understand how she was stuck and was stressed about getting to work, first day back and all. I tried to shove her loose from the front but she was truly hung up and spinning three tires, the fourth was resting. I cleared around the back tires and worked at pushing her back forward into her properly cleaned driveway. I eventually got her back to square one and we dunged out the end better. She was fine after that. I had to be careful working around the Infiniti since I know what repairs cost on those from earlier life experiences. I got back and saw that the snow had filled back in everywhere except the sidewalk. I couldn’t tell what I’d shovelled for the most part so I hung my head in shame and went inside to start work and catch my breath. I was able to get powered up and running in time for my 10am webinar. When it ended I got ready for a longer meeting and for an even longer one after that. By the time I was able to stop for lunch it was two and I had the last meeting left. I guess I was on mountain time. Just as I was doing the dishes my two hour meeting for the rest of the day got moved. This meant I could get back to my shoveling. I worked at it a while and when I was thoroughly gassed, I took the opportunity with the sun being out still to work on the snow blower. I didn’t have the right oil so I simply gave it a shake to mix up the gas and set about starting it. It took about five pulls to catch. I think mostly it wasn’t drawing fuel initially. I’d done from the sidewalk to the house and only had the last six feet or so. The pile got higher and higher on the one side and I got caked in snow from the light breeze in my face. I tried going with the wind but that would have filled the neighbour’s driveway up. When it was all dunged out I took a walk up to the mailbox and plucked out a waiting package before returning to work.

I felt like I needed to make up some time for work, having been outside for more than an hour twice during the day. I went at it until minutes ahead of six before powering down. Amazingly it was still light out when I got back downstairs and I noticed a larger bird at my feeder. It appeared to be a cardinal. I couldn’t get a great look at it since it was being cagey and hiding on the far side. I watched it for several minutes afterwards and just took some time to sit and enjoy nature after having battled it for a large portion of the day.

I was supposed to have coconut shrimp for dinner but in all the frustrating snow nonsense I neglected to take the shrimp out so had to switch over to chicken wings, which were thawed. I made a baker’s dozen with rough half in a spicy gar par sauce (left) and the remainder sauced with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce (right). It was half seven when I finished the cleanup and I shut it down. I got ready for bed and climbed in. YouTube then my audiobook rounded out a day with much more physical exertion than usual.