Does a 4 foot Mountain of Snow (& hidden ice boulders) blocking your driveway look like attempted murder to you?

—> This was supposed to be our back up blog & repository for blogged articles from other blogs — Now it looks like it’s become our ‘GoTo’ mainstay. <—

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Sunday, February 11th, 2018 —> -2˚C / +27˚F & grey & damp @ 4:55 pm on Pamm’s Birthday in Atlantic Canada 🙂 —

— Schnarr! I’m one of the youngest guys down this corner of our street and when the bleepity bleep bleeping snow plows go out of their way to plow us in like this it DOES begin to feel like attempted murder. Grumble grumble … There were chunks of ice hidden beneath three and four-foot ridges of snow that had to be 2 feet wide and a foot and a half tall, and the snowblower didn’t like slamming into those. I stopped near the road to pick up and/or kick those monsters out of the way and people driving up the street in 4 wheel drive vehicles looked at me like “Holy Snar!” 😉

— When Sears Canada laid off its workers and paid big bonuses to its executives a couple months ago – Cathi looked at the snowblower and said, “Hey, good thing we didn’t bite the bullet and shell out that money to extend the warranty on this thing. They announced that they won’t honour those contracts after today.”

— The snow mountain doesn’t look all that impressive in the above photo. The snowblower and I cut away more than twice the height of the snowblower’s – um – hopper? What do you call the business end of a snowblower? “Chipper”? Ick.

— But today I discovered that even our anthropomorphic snowblower has a sense of humour. When I started it up it went forward and back – fine – but the blades wouldn’t turn at all. I very cautiously checked to make sure there wasn’t a solid chunk of ice holding the blades stuck, then tipped the thing up and down a couple times to jar it awake. – And, leaving it in non moving mode, I pushed down the lever that is supposed to turn on the blades’ action and cautiously leaned as far forward as I could, to see if it was working. As soon as my face was in range for the snow blowing spout ( is that whatcha might call it? ) – The thing kicked in and got me with a slight wump of snow – I tell ya, artificial intelligence is here… 😉 —

— Sigh —

— Lately I’ve become a fan of my iPhone camera – I used to think they were over-hyped and over-priced until we began having issues with our Samsungs.

 

— & Cathi talked about this painting last night – Her aunt brought her on a trip to Europe in the 80’s – a tour of the Netherlands and Belgium focusing on art museums and artistic stuff.

— I think both Cathi and her aunt ( a concert pianist and supporting member of a national museum of art ) thought the view to the left here, in real life, was awe-inspiring. Cathi took a photograph and then painted what she’d captured and remembered and gave the painting to her aunt for Christmas that year.

— Her aunt loved it.

— Sadly, after her aunt died almost twenty years later, the painting came back to Cathi and of course, it still means a lot to her.

— { It looked like I had it framed perfectly in the LED screen — }

— Sigh, I should quit while I’m ahead?

— Am I? Ahead? – Of what?

— Shrug —,

~~~~~ Jim