Snowmaggedon

The snow and ice the weather people have been gobbling about for a few weeks finally arrived.

Man, what a weekend.

First off is Dewayne asking “Why aren’t you prepared?”

Well? Why weren’t you prepared?

FFS it’s been all over the place for weeks. No reason you didn’t lay in some supplies and batten down the hatches. You should be using a pantry system anyhow. Store stuff up. Use some, replace it. It’s not that tough. It’s adulting.

Bread, milk, toilet paper. Why don’t you have these?

First off, I don’t each much bread. I’ve been working on the same loaf for over a month. I keep it in the fridge so it won’t go bad before I use it. Same with english muffins. I have a pack out, and one in the freezer. I don’t use milk at all and I buy paper products in bulk since before the big COVID fiasco. And, I pay attention. So more than a week ago I stocked up.

Typically, I spend my weekends with the Girl. So Friday, I got everything at the house squared away, and went over preparing to hunker down there for the weekend. Why not? I got a big truck that’s mostly impervious to this stuff. I’d make it back. Even then, I had my mac with me, so if I have to log into O365 from it and work, I could. Got my shit all in order. Or at least I thought.

Saturday, it’s icy and shitty. I got up, and realized that the one thing I didn’t pack was my meds. I keep some there, but I hadn’t been updating the stash. So I had one day of BP, a few stomach and thyroid. Crap. Now, I have to make a decision. Go home during a small clear window in late afternoon, or gut it out and potentially get stuck until Monday with no meds. Saturday night, into Sunday, was supposed to be the biggest dump followed by a high in the teens.

So I took off around 4pm. It wasn’t great:

It started sleeting so hard that my windshield was icing up. The defroster couldn’t keep up.

Off the highway was worse:

My neighborhood was solid pack snow and ice. But, the monster had no trouble with any of it.

Turns out, the hard pack snow/ice just got thicker. My truck can handle that easily. Notsomuch your average idiot. They simply don’t get it. You don’t stop at a light on a hill when there’s no one on the road. I got stuck behind a numbnut in an Acura spinning his way to get started for doing just that. Meanwhile the beast simply loped along behind him. Heading into my neighborhood from that street is a hard right, almost hairpin, turn that goes uphill. Didn’t slip one tire going up it.

I got home, fed the pups, made some soup for me, and tucked into YouTubes while the sleet and snow fell. I’d have preferred being next to my warm mamacita, but it was the smart choice.

The next morning was a winter wonderland, of sorts. Nothing like up north. But still very cold. So, I took the dogs out to release a little cabin fever:

They loved it. A short walk around the Church, less than a mile round trip.

Not too many of the faithful there that morning.

The birds were hitting the feeder, hard:

I spent the day assembling a standup desk and cleaning my office, while watching the numbnuttery unfold:

Seriously?

The Girl said there were more of these on her neighborhood Facebook page. Two things, most likely, here:

• You aren’t waiting for the hot water to get there. The heater is usually in the garage. In newer houses, for whatever reason, they have the kitchen sinks on exterior walls. Takes a minute to get there. It takes 3-4 minutes for hot water to come out of my master bathroom sink when it’s 18 degrees outside.
• You didn’t drip water, or run the water at night, and now you have a frozen pipe. That’ll be fun when it heats up and thaws. Prepare for the panic posts asking how to turn the water off .

This house is the only one I’ve lived in Texas that doesn’t have water pipes in the exterior walls. They all run down one middle interior wall that feeds both baths, the kitchen, and washer. And, looks like they replumbed it with PEX. Lucky me. It was built back when dudes understood how to design for function.

I’ve found I don’t need to drip water from the faucets. I get up at least twice a night to pee, so I run the hot water while I do my business. That heats up the hot water line, and flushing the head takes care of the cold.

This post was all over my Facebook:

What a retard. Has to be a troll. Maybe not though.

Anyhow, that’s not how electricity works, skippy. It’s not like a bucket of water where if you use too much someone else gets none. “Don’t use the microwave, don’t use the dishwasher….”

Bullshit.

Peak usage/load happens in the heat of the summer around here, not the winter. Many houses here have gas heat, not electric. This is the second place I’ve been that has electric heat. The four others all had gas.

The problem in the last ‘snowmaggedon’ was utter incompetence and lack of planning. The infrastructure wasn’t hardened. They had a fuel supply problem to the gas fired plants. Others were offline for maintenance. It created a failure cascade. Nothing this idiot suggests would prevent that. TBH, using the washer and dishwasher isn’t a bad idea as it would circulate hot water through your pipes.

Gov. Abbott was right. It’s fixed. Why? Because heads rolled, and those that are left, including him, want to keep their phony baloney jobs, that’s why.

Whatever. Because I’m a grown man, I’m prepared. I have a stocked pantry, I have a generator and 15 gallons of non-ethanol fuel. I have solar device chargers. I grew up learning when and when to not drive. I learned how to drive and otherwise deal with snow and ice.

These newer generations, Millennials and Gen-Z need to learn this stuff while they still can.