A Snowy Day

I work at home.

What do I care if it snows?

I prepared for this. I said as much.

This freeze spell wasn’t as bad as last year, by far. Hell, it’s already melting as I speak, like it does in DFW after a freeze.

Thursday morning hit, and we were encased in ice. It was nice. Gone were the squirrels and morons blasting down the street by my house. It was beautiful and quiet. So I farted around working and playing with the dogs.

The dogs, by the way were like middle school boys stuck inside. Didn’t help, whatsoever, that Herself was working at home as well. So they had someone else to pester. We have food, power, pretty much everything. Except patience. That lasted until noon, tops.

So some random notes I missed from my last snow post:

• When you get ready the week before, if you don’t normally work at home and will when weather is tough, make sure you can log in and things work before you are supposed to be working. Herself deals with IT as well as her real work, and spent the morning with a princess that hadn’t bothered to test her remote access in two years – on a windows 7 machine FFS! Halfway through the day it was talk.to.the.hand. Everyone else had their stuff in order and brought boxes of files home to work. Take a vacation day.
• In addition to Gilligans, I forgot the squirrels and tuners. Halfway through the day you could hear idiots in the Walmart lot a block away doing donuts. I’ve done that, but not on a busy corner where the rozzers can see. There was also a numbnut tearing through the neighborhood on a 4 wheeler. So much for the quiet of the ice.
• People get fixated on their mobiles, the oracles of all truth. I mentioned it wasn’t bad, almost 40 degrees. ‘No, it’s 25’ says Herself. I said the thermometer outside says 40. She said it’s wrong. Her iPhone said it’s 25. Whatever. Shit’s melting, with water running in the street. It don’t do that at 25.
• Dogs are like retarded middle schoolers in the snow and ice. They get bored and you spend most of the day dealing with their bullshit. No way I was walking them on ice. I had to go out and play with them a lot.
• Although today, I did walk them. I walked on the grass, because they were shot out of a cannon having been cooped up two days. Nearly broke an f-ing hip.
• Speaking of retarded dogs. Each day we’ve had a ‘Cesar Milan’ moment as the rest of the pack, unable to vote Jasper off the island, decides to give him a beatdown for being a punk and a moron. Lucky for us, they did that outside.
• There’s a yuge difference between weather.com, the iPhone app, and what the radio weather says will happen. The radio was saying it’ll be down to 10 tonight. iPhone says 19, as it said last night. My thermometer said like 30 this morning when it was supposed to be 20. Call me skeptical. Given that iPhone says 28 now, but the thermometer says 40, I’ll go with my lying eyes instead of what they are saying. Shit’s melting outside. It don’t do that at 28.
• We really live in the age of the dumbshit. I saw a post on NextDoor that asked if anyone else’s gas bill was rising so fast. Really? It’s been 20-30 every night for weeks. Two things hit me when I see this; They are in an old, poorly insulated house (as I was in my first two in Plano), or you bought a big-ass house with 2-3-4 zones and they are all firing off in the cold. Duh.
• Saw a ‘does anyone have a key to the water shutoff’ this morning. FFS, tap on a neighbors door. Use a screwdriver and pliers. Your house will be flooded by the time someone answers. Teachable moment for a locust, no doubt.
• Herself went to the office Friday (today). We cleared the gate again and away she went. I figured I had to clear the ice off the driveway somehow. Note to self; buy sand. I always seem to need it and not have it. It’s stupid cheap, why not? So I puzzled how to deal with this. Hey! We have a salt system in the spa! So I grabbed a quart container of salt from my stash. Mmmh, not enough. What else? Cat Litter! I topped off the cat box and spread the rest on the driveway where Herself would drive. Holy shit, this stuff is grippy! Good idea! Later, I went out and thought I’d try to clear some ice and snow. Where I’d spread salt, it seized up and came off in sheets when I shoveled. But the cat litter melted to mush wherever I spread it. What the hell is in that stuff? I need to stock more! Hell, it lifts oil spills straight off the concrete also. I’ll buy a shit-ton next week. Won’t go to waste for sure.

So last night the whole world around us is frozen in a sheet of ice. We have food, wine, electricity, heat. No reason to venture out. So what does Herself want to do? Go to the office, and maybe pick up food on the way home, That’s what. Yeah, Call me Gilligan. Plans-Thwarted. It took no shit thirty minutes to chip ice from the gate track and get the gate working to get a car out. And what do we take?

Herself’s hotrod Lexus. The new one. Not my nearly paid off nebish Rav4. BTW- this is why I want a beater truck. This is what they are made for.

We get the gate open and venture out. All ice. None treated.

“You’re driving” Herself says.

No sweat. It’s stupid, but I’ve driven on this shit since age sixteen. My friends and I would literally drive around in snow and ice for fun. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to push a ’72 Olds 98 out of a rut. Damn thing weighed like four tons. So I snapped when she was backseat driving.

I.Know.What.I’m.Doing.

And one of the things I know is it was dumb to be out.

We saw the usual suspects in their bouts of misery – the idiot in the 4×4 pickup almost at the apex of the hill, canted sideways, stuck as hell. Personally, I’d have pivoted my wheels and backed to an opening and turned around. No way you get that beast any further than you have.

Been there. Got the T-Shirt and the Video. BTW they do the same thing in mud.

Another was a millennial in a Subaru that appeared to have spun out and busted his front end on a curb. Nice work, dude. That AWD didn’t hep whatsoever, did it?

And my fat ass cackles as I toodle by in an RX-350 which seems unfazed by the ice. Their traction control and ABS is stunning. Words fail. It also helps that I’m not a moron and understand that the rules are different in that world. Don’t even bother to stop when that light turns red if there’s no one about. No sudden moves. Not too much gas, not to much brake, if any. Act as if the brakes don’t exist. Never stop moving if you can avoid it. Momentum is your friend.

Physics. SCIENCE!

BTW, every restaurant had closed hours ago. The only thing that looked open was Wally world. Yeah. No. Whataburger was open, with a line wrapped around the building. I like Whataburger. Not that much though.

I thought it would be fun to record snippets from the day of ice and turn them into a video.

Enjoy!