If there were any doubt left, it is gone now. It is truly winter again. This past week has been a hard one, with temperatures stuck in the single digits, and many people suffering from problems such as burst pipes, dead car batteries, and furnaces which, for reasons which have yet to be explained by science, pick the dead of winter to simply die. If this is not bad enough, the Boston area is in the grip of the annual ‘œWinter Time Stomach Virus Spectacular’. Funny thing about this. It used to be that when you got it, you stayed home, with a basin or bucket at the ready, until the damn thing passed. Today, people seem to think it’s just fine to go to a movie theater or shopping mall. Suburban yuppie mommies gleefully send the little spewing ones off to school, figuring the school nurse will simply ‘œtake care of it’. The death of common sense and logical thought, I guess.
Everything around Boston is grey, gritty and hard. The world outside has a bleak appearance to it, sort of like the sets of numerous nuclear doomsday movies. The sand and salt they throw all over the roads to keep them usable gets onto everything: Your car, your clothes, your floors, and your person. No one can tell what kind car anyone has, since they now all look alike. Maybe that’s a good thing. Car thieves probably can’t tell a late model Mercedes or BMW from a battered Chevy Nova. Both cars, parked side by side, look grey and filthy. No, no telling one from another.
This is the time of year when even the hardiest of New Englanders think about hauling stakes, and heading off to Florida, hurricanes and drug thugs be damned. This is the time of year when people come barging into travel agencies, waving a credit card and pleading for the agents to ‘œplease send me someplace where it’s warm and sunny!’
This brings me to today. Now, as my regular readers (both of them) know, I really have little use for local TV weather people. Their over-hyped weather forecasting, and their constant raving about their ‘œLive Doppler Weather Radar’ drives me nuts. But this time, I must give them some credit. Starting on Thursday, they were forecasting a ‘œbig one’, to rival the great blizzard of ‘˜78, in its ferocity, and snow accumulation. They were actually right this time. The first flakes starting falling at 4 PM yesterday, and by midnight, the snow was coming down at one to three inches per hour, with a wind that sounded like it was not of this earth. A screaming, howling wind that I have heard in horror movies. And the snow? I could barely spot the houses across the street.
To put it all in perspective, here was the view from my kitchen window at about 8 AM this morning:
Yes, those are people’s cars parked out there. Yeah, this was one for the history books, that’s for sure. Some areas received two feet of snow in twelve hours, and some areas scored more than thirty inches. It seems to be over now. The sky is mostly clear, and the moon is visible. (Although it looks like one of the final scenes from Steven King’s ‘Storm of The Century’) School in most districts is called off for tomorrow, and many work places will call delayed staring times. This helps out a lot.
Now, I am tired, and as Doctor Smith would say ‘My back is a disaster area!’. Time to watch a DVD and go to bed.
Cheers, and happy shoveling.
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