Natural Distraction in Everyday Ramblings

Now we have light… snow light. This is a scrub jay in for a peanut about an hour ago.

Those of you who live in places where snow is normal in winter would be proud of me. I was out there shoveling a path to the street just after sunrise. We had over a foot and it is still snowing.

Even in 2008, our last big snow we didn’t have this much. We are not going to get above freezing until Sunday so it is going to be a long slog to this thaw and freedom of movement.

Our office is closed but those of us who can work at home are. It is quite beautiful out and I am trying to focus on that.

I was kind of blue yesterday (as you could probably tell by my post) and ended up conceding that I was going to get under 8,000 steps for the day and curled up with my iPad mini and a bunch of podcasts and the cats and zoned out.

The body I saw on the gurney as I was coming back from the store yesterday was of a 29-year-old man that died of hypothermia; the 4th death in the city proper of it in two weeks. The rescue team had to rappel down the wooded hillside to bring him up.

We have a new mayor and he seems to being doing what he can to make sure services and warming shelters are available for the people that need them and I have some ideas now about what I can say and do if I encounter folks sleeping out in the near future. There appears to be more support services coming online for now.

The timing of this storm was better in a way as to not have so many people stranded. The woman I trained yesterday morning to help with backing us up a bit was stuck in a car with another coworker for over 6 hours getting home from the holiday employee appreciation party and then had to walk about a mile in the snow up the hill towards her house until a guy in a monster truck with his wife came by and gave her a ride home.

The shuttle that was supposed to take folks back to the office didn’t show up and the managers had to drive people back and that took four hours just to get them to the office. Then they had to get home.

Have I mentioned how grateful I am to not have had to deal with the act of hubris that ignored the weather and required people to go to the party?

No one is ignoring the weather now.

I just went out to shovel the most recent snow and was chuffed to see that my nicest neighbor had used “my” path to get out to clear the snow off his car. He works in healthcare so needs to be able to access his car.

Oh man, I noticed a fellow taking pictures out in the street and see that a chunk of the big historic magnolia next to my place came down. There is a car under part of it but I can’t tell if it is damaged or not.

It is all excellent distraction from what is going on in Washington and New York right now.

Last updated January 12, 2017