And snowed in again.
3 minute read
February 10, 2010, 3:08 PM
Winter certainly is packing a punch this week, isn’t it? First the snowstorm on Friday, and now today. And meanwhile, the collapse of the gutters continued, as the gutter that had collapsed under the weight of the snow over my neighbor’s balcony now collapsed over my balcony, leaving this board with nails in it hanging ominously overhead:
Meanwhile, the icicles are really growing. I knocked all the icicles off that board about an hour ago, and so the icicles you see are about an hour’s worth of growth. There were a few big ones before I broke them all off, and I had some fun with the big ones.
Do you remember the Pastoral Symphony sequence from Fantasia? In the thunderstorm scene, Vulcan crafts the lightning bolts and tosses them to Zeus, who then throws them down to the ground, like this:
Image: Disney
So before I had fun with the icicles, I checked all around my balcony to make sure there were no people, and then I broke the big icicles off, and I was Zeus for a few minutes, hurling three-foot-long icicles off the balcony like they were lightning. Unfortunately, though, in real life, they don’t fall nearly as nicely as they do in the cartoons. While Zeus’s lightning bolts hit the ground at a nice angle, my icicles had some spin on them, and thus most landed on their sides. I hit a bush with one of them. That was kind of funny.
Then the floor of my balcony is pretty much ice, and nothing that a broom can fix this time. It’s pretty icy out there, mainly because there’s stuff that froze on there after the gutter collapsed. Then that hampered my efforts to remove snow, and now it’s all frozen. Lovely. Well, that’ll keep, I suppose.
And for those of you not in the DC area, this is what it looks like outside Glenmont Metro, from the traffic camera at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Urbana Drive (Glenmont station):
Photo: Montgomery County Department of Public Works and Transportation
For those familiar, the KFC next to Glenmont station is just out of frame to the left. Then if you’re familiar with my Transit Center site, this is the intersection where the buses go in and out to service Glenmont station. Yeah, the roads are white. The only people crazy enough to go out are these people in their big SUVs.
That’s the thing about the big SUVs. These people get in their big cars and develop a “Superman Complex”, thinking that they’re invincible with their big, four-wheel-drive vehicle. You wouldn’t believe how many SUVs I’ve seen in the ditch in bad weather because their drivers thought that they were invincible and went driving when they shouldn’t. I for one know better than to go driving when it’s snowing and I don’t have to. My Sable is front-wheel-drive, and while it does give better control than rear-wheel-drive (which the Previa had), I know I’m not invincible.
Web site: Bo Obama in the snow. Adorable.
Song: Believe it or not, I've had that song from Today's Special that made Jeff cry in "Tears" stuck in my head. That's the one about the boy who finds the bird, nurses her back to health, and then loses her.
Quote: So with the current snowfall on top of the first one, how deep do you think it's going to be in all? I'm going to say pretty deep...
Categories: Movies, Snowmageddon