Ah yes, the Alberta Blizzard Season, the most wonderful time of the year.
I like a clean sidewalk.
Nature has provided me yet another series of opportunities to show the world how much I really prefer my snow to be in neat piles rather than unruly drifts on my parking spot or in front of my house. After work yesterday, I spent the better part of 2 hours pushing too much damn snow around creating 5 to 6 foot piles of snow at various points near my house.
Poor Intransigentia she was also caught up in the madness and was eventually tasked with digging the first pile of snow out and transferring it to the new second pile, in an effort to make room for the next snowfall. She almost disappeared into the mighty drifts that were accumulating, but did a heroic job in fighting her way out and giving me more space to put the new snow.
It is now, the next morning, it is still snowing and my back has more than a few things to say about yesterdays orgy of shovelling and scraping. It is the dull throbbing pain that makes me write this particular post and the amusing fact that I seemed to have frozen my posterior yesterday so much so that I made cold spots wherever I landed, sitting inside for at least three hours.
Not me but I can relate.
The best part is that, it is still snowing, so I have more good times to look forward to after work.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
5 comments
January 9, 2011 at 8:48 am
tildeb
I can relate, having lived through two meters of the stuff dumped in three days before xmas not from any storm but just a stubborn streamer off the lake. I had to pull the snow off the driveway and drag it into the back yard where my ramp of packed snow was the roof height of the house. The snow was so heavy and wet that it trapped overhead wires against the heightened roof of the house and bent their supporting poles. When this dumping was followed by a thaw the following week, people headed out to rake their roofs or, in my case with a flat section, shovel it off. But hey, that’s winter in this part of Canada. It’s bad only because we have to go to get out and find our way to work when nature is telling us to chill; it would be delightful to be able to sit back and simply enjoy the ever-changing landscapes and then shovel after it finishes snowing.
The people I feel really bad for are those folk out east: storms of rain and high winds with lots of flooding followed by storms of snow and high winds. They’re just getting snorkeled.
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January 9, 2011 at 9:25 am
The Arbourist
The people I feel really bad for are those folk out east: storms of rain and high winds with lots of flooding followed by storms of snow and high winds.
Agreed. They are getting slammed pretty hard out there, the combination of rain and snow is no fun for anyone.
A small upside is the distinct lack of bugs; I have not had a mosquito bite for months!
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January 9, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Bleatmop
Blech. I just shoveled through some 4 foot drifts. Good exercise, but not my idea of a good time. My posterior was kept warm though as I’ve found that putting a pair of pajama pants underneath a pair of sweat pants seems to do the trick. My jacket is also long enough to cover about 3/4 of my butt when I’m in half bent over shoveling mode.
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January 9, 2011 at 1:20 pm
The Arbourist
Oh, good plan. I was wearing jeans at the time, and they are not really known for their insulating properties. The Pj/sweatpants combo might just do the trick, as it seems to have stopped snowing for the moment. The downside is of course, the temperature continues to fall. :/
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January 10, 2011 at 11:00 am
intransigentia
ehhh, it wasn’t that bad, I was never buried deeper than my waist! Of course there were a few times climbing through the snow pile that it suddenly gave way and I’d drop from ankle-deep to crotch-deep. I found that a pair of long underwear under a pair of fleece pants kept me fairly warm and dry.
I’m just glad it’s a dry cold; the snow is light and fluffy, not heavy and wet, and there’s no rain mixed in. We’ll dig out and carry on with no infrastructure damaged.
On the other hand, I went grocery shopping yesterday and it was really obvious how dependent we are on getting stuff trucked in. Non-perishables were fine, but Produce was almost empty, with nothing left except the stuff that stores really well or gets shipped in green. No lettuce or peppers or any of that kind of stuff. Over in Dairy I got a 2-L of 2% that was in the last crate. There were a couple crates of skim, and that was it.
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