Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Snow Day!

We're in the midst of a great winter storm. Schools are closed, government offices are closed, the buses are stopped - even the malls are closed! I took the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and enjoy the snow. You can click on any of the following photos if you wish to enbiggen them. I used a real camera instead of my camera phone, so they actually look pretty clear when they're enbiggenned.




The plow hit our street once today, but we've gotten so much since then that the street is pretty much unnavigable right now. The plow got stuck on one of our neighboring streets, so it left a big pile of snow in the middle of the street and drove off. I dread shoveling the car out after they plow again.




I love the way, when we get enough snow to shut everything down, everyone in the neighborhood is home and it's sort of like a big party; everyone is out shoveling (except me - more on that in a moment), chatting, walking around - it's really quite wonderful.



Here is our neighbor Kenny:




Kenny, who does not have kids of his own, seems rather aloof and one could easily interpret this as unfriendliness, although I think he's just shy, but he spends a lot of time with these two kids who wouldn't move to allow him to shovel out his driveway, so he shoveled around them.




Next-door neighbors Terri and Cricket. You decided who is whom. Terri and her wife Rachel are two of the best neighbors one could ask for.




Ms. Geranium (aka Luminiferous Ether) and Rona (next-door neighbor on our other side) out shoveling. Rona just got back from Hawaii yesterday, which was fortunate for us, since we were the designated shovelers while she was gone. Rather an extreme switch from 70˚ in Hawaii to Wisconsin winter.




Rona and another neighbor, Alicia, chatting about Hawaii in the snow.





And, of course, we have the lovely and talented, aforementioned and aforepictured Ms. Geranium. I injured my back a little over two weeks ago and it's still giving me a pain in the, well, back, so I can't really shovel. Ms. Geranium did all our shoveling today. What a gal! Don't you just love those leopard spots, too? Roowwrr!





Our recently adopted dog, Molly, who doesn't mind snow as long as it's not falling out of the sky.




While walking around the neighborhood, I saw through the bushes what looked like a pickup truck buried in snow.




I decided to check it out from the other side of the bushes. It clearly hadn't moved for quite some time and the person who plows the parking lot in which it is parked had plowed all the snow from the lot over the truck. The front end is completely buried.




In this next one, I climbed on top of the mound to get a look. Once on top, I sank up to my crotch in the snow, so I took this shot and went back down rather than go any further.




This neighbor's sports-car is going nowhere fast .




Some other scenes from around the neighborhood:




















Molly needs a lot of excercise, so I take her to the bark park pretty much every day. Since I really enjoy driving in snow, I thought we would go today. I decided I would take a drive around the neighborhood to see how the roads were prior to venturing very far from home. I concluded that it wasn't a good idea. Here's the car before I cleared it off to drive around. The snow makes it look like a mini-van, but it's not.




Back inside, a view out the front window.

6 comments:

Suzy said...

Wow, it looks quite a bit like that around my house too. I think Ms. Ether deserves a little something special for doing all of that shoveling. Maybe you need to go down to Lake Mendota and catch a few of those shovelers that the radio naturist (and guitar teacher extraordinaire) says are there to help out next time.

Whiskeymarie said...

So jealous- I would LOVE to get just one more big storm that shuts everything down. Just don't ask me to help shovel. I hate shoveling.

Great pictures!

Jess Wundrun said...

Yay for snow!

Ben was supposed to go to Chicago yesterday and I'm glad he didn't or he would have been coming home about the time everyone got stranded on the Interstate!

Down the street there's a car that got plowed in. Except it looks to me like the plow missed the car by about four inches. That guy has my sympathy. Except that it's near the corner, which is full of snow. I'm hoping I don't sideswipe the car next time I slide through that intersection.

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

I am sooooooooo jealous you got all that snow, all we got was rain, rain, rain. Mrs. Ether is quite the snow bunny! Hubba hubba.

poodledoc said...

Good pic of Ms Ether!

Poodledoc, Jr has spent most of the day praying for another snow or wind chill day. He does this weird chant thing with burning sage and dances around the snowperson he built in the backyard.

Ed said...

Suzy: Yes, a few hundred shovelers would be welcome.

Whiskeymarie: I hope you get your storm and maybe some neighbor kid will be looking to make some money shoveling.

Jess: Good thing Ben didn't go, after hearing about how long some people were stranded on the interstate.

Dr. MvM: You'll have to make it up here in the winter some time.

Poodledoc: Junior almost succeeded. A few degress colder and they would have closed school today. Maybe if he had done his chanting and dancing naked it would have worked better.