Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"If ignorance is bliss, then knowledge must surely be an ulcer." -- Florence Ambrose, in the comic strip Freefall by Mark Stanley, 1998-07-23

Hmm. Looks like the snow started an hour or two before the folks on television last night were predicting it would. When I woke up two and a half hours ago (no, that is definitely nowhere near enough sleep, you're quite right -- I just suddenly popped awake after two and a half hours of aleep and have no idea why) it was already starting here in SoWeBo. Seems to be accumulating fairly slowly though.

The way my back feels, shovelling would be completely out of the question today regardless of how responsible I want to be regarding the sidewalk. Fortunately, according to those same telly-folks, it should be a job for a push-broom today, not a shovel. And if it continues falling at the current rate, it'll be a while before there's even enough to bother doing anything about.

(Hmm. New forecast just came on while I was writing this -- they've added an inch to last night's predictions. And it sounds like it's the extra-slippery stuff, however small the quantity that's fallen yet. So if you're driving in the area today watch out for the folks not taking conditions into account, and good luck dodging their errors.)

I'm moving most of the things on today's to-do list down two places, and inserting "get more sleep" and "figure out how to make back hurt less" at the top. There's stuff I want to do tomorrow. (It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to get to rehearsal tonight.) I'm feeling impatient to get more computer equipment moved into the rack, but I'd better not push my body too hard. There's really no urgency there except my own impatience anyhow.

I did get back to sleep. I woke again to light mist and a warning from the television weatherfolk that any snow not cleared in the afternoon would soon become more-difficult-to-deal-with ice. Pain meds allowed me to wield the pushbroom, though using a shovel was still out of the question even just for scraping without lifting snow in it (result determined by experiment). A neighbour yelled out his window asking whether I needed help, and I replied that I wasn't sure yet; when I'd done what I could with the broom and stared at the trod-upon section already packed down and stuck to the concrete it didn't seem like enough to call someone across the street to get up, so I figured I'd throw salt on it and hope that would suffice (and that pedestrians would have the sense to walk on the cleared part instead of the uber-slippery zone). I went back inside to make something hot to eat and drink, and Breno arrived a few minutes later. In that little time, the salt had been far more effective than I'd expected. Yay chemistry, both the "make me able to navigate stairs" kind and the labour-saving kind. And, as long as I'm cheering for chemistry, yay for the food kind as well.

Then the pain meds wore off. Ow. Glad I'd already decided not to try to go anywhere today.

Purple potato pics pending, pain permitting.