Winter Wonderland (No, Not a Music Post) ...

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While pondering what to write about today, a couple of ideas crossed my mind. (No, one of them wasn't "more music." Based on the number of views of those two posts over the weekend, it ain't all that popular a topic.)

One was "Hey, let's do a post about tanks!" - no, let's not. Juvat just wants to blow them up. Another was "Hey, let's bitch about the government." I think juvat feels about government much the same way he feels about tanks. Can't say I blame him.

The less said about government the better, I ain't in the mood for a rant.

So as I often do, I went searching for random pictures. As the Christmas season is upon us (come on, I played the song the other day, so it's official) I used "Christmas" as my search criteria. That opening picture really caught my eye, so I used it. I've had Christmases like that in the past. Lots of snow, and cold, real cold.

Not February sub-zero cold, but in the teens cold. Which by late December I was used to, back in the day.

I remember winters as a kid being colder and having a lot more snow. Of course, the "lot more snow" thing could have something to do with me being a lot shorter back then. It's relative. But cold, I remember it being colder when I was a kid. Not too many years ago (within the last decade) we had a Christmas day with temperatures in the 60s. Pretty damned warm for 43° North Latitude in New England.

Its not that I prefer cold weather, though honestly, my ideal temperature is around 65°, but that in the winter it should feel, ya know, like winter. At least it should feel like the winters I grew up in. Of course, if, like Beans, you are used to the more tropical venues, your winters growing up were certainly a Hell of a lot warmer than mine.

If you live in some place like Minnesota or North Dakota, you probably scoff at my idea of "cold." You shouldn't. I've seen the temperature at -40° where I grew up, and that was without a breath of wind. At those temperatures the chimney smoke goes straight up. It hurts to breathe (outside of course) and it's dangerous to be out in that weather for too long if you're not properly dressed for it. (Think layers.) But no, it wasn't like that all the time.

I've been to North Dakota, in June. On the base (Minot, why not?) I saw electrical outlets at the front of parking spaces near the headquarters building. As I recall, you could plug in your car's engine block heater. Being from a warmer clime, I had to ask what that was. When told, I was fascinated, there were a number of times when having one of those in Vermont would have been awesome. I got the impression that those were used a lot in North Dakota.

One of the reasons I moved to Rhode Island is it's warmer than Vermont. It still gets cold, but for not as long and certainly not as low as I've seen in the past. I'm not sure, but in the 22 years I've lived in Little Rhody I don't think I've ever seen the temperature get below zero. (That's Fahrenheit, I don't do metric anything, well, except for weapon calibers. Even though I lived in Asia for nearly seven years and in Germany for nearly eight, I never adopted Celsius as my go to scale. Yes, I know, I know, water boils at 212° F and freezes at 32° F, in Celsius it's 100° and 0°, much more "logical," I suppose. But hey, metric is a product of the French Revolution, it ain't, ya know, 'Merican.)

We also don't get nearly as much snow as they do further north. But we do get the occasional blizzard which can dump a foot and a half of the white stuff in my driveway. (Yes, there have been storms which dropped more snow in this area, but I didn't live here at the time.)

I also know that other areas get snow in addition to my driveway, but my driveway concerns me most. The state/town will clear the streets and highways I need to travel, but I'm responsible for my driveway. I remember the day we got hit with 17 inches of the white stuff. The Missus Herself and Your Humble Scribe ventured out to clear the deck, the walkway, and the driveway. It was a major undertaking.

After the deck and walkway were cleared (it's worth noting that due to the wind the walkway just off the deck had something like five feet of snow piled up on it), we started clearing the driveway itself. Around the cars, not a big deal (no, we don't have a garage, and don't ask ...) but when we got to the main part of the driveway, we were pretty much spent.

We just sort of stood there, leaning on our shovels, wondering if we could get done before nightfall. As we stood there, no doubt looking very pathetic, a couple of young 'uns in a pickup truck (with a snow blower in the bed of the pickup) stopped and asked if we'd like for them to clear the rest of the driveway (to include the massive pile of compacted snow pushed up by the town plow at the foot of the driveway), to which we said, "Why yes, yes, we'd like that."

One of the kids asked, "Is thirty bucks okay?"

To which I answered, "Sure, that'll be fine," as I reached for my wallet.

Once inside, watching the two young fellers cleaning out the driveway, The Missus Herself opined that thirty was a bit steep for her tastes. I pointed out that I would have gone as high as fifty rather than shovel the rest of that stuff. She thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah, you're right. Thirty works."

These days I've got a guy for that. Spend money to avoid back-breaking manual labor?

You betcha!