Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has a peaceful and fulfilling Christmas!

Nevermind

I was sitting here in my quarters thinking it's pretty cold tonight, until I opened an e-mail from The Wife. MauserDog doesn't look very happy at all out in the back yard, and usually he'll lay down in the snow and you have to persuade him to come back in the house.

Future fuzzy slippers #1 and #2 require areas shoveled out for them:

because the snow is almost over the fence that comes up to my waist:

I'm looking forward to getting out of here, but going from sand to heaps of snow? Not so much.

I Hate Winter

I got a phone call at work from The Wife today that we had water coming leaking in part of the flat roof on our addition. That was at 11:30 in the morning. When I got home at 11:00 PM from work, I got to squeeze through a second story window to see what was going on. Which was four inches of snow on top of three to eight inches of ice. Couldn't break it with the shovel, couldn't break it with a sledge hammer. Tomorrow, we'll see what happens with the fifty pounds of ice melt on it.

Crap Storm

Got a call at work from my wife telling me we had some water dripping down down one of our walls. Boss lady lets me head home to evaluate problem. Walked out the hospital doors into a two-block visibility snow storm. Arrive at home, and yes, there is a small drip coming from where a vent pipe is housed. A suspicion starts to form. Said vent is on top of the flat roof of our addition. Memory serving, vent is about eight inches high, give or take. Time to squeeze ample butt through a second story window and evaluate this in person. Hmm, window seems to have shrunk since the last time I was through it last summer. Where's the vent? Oh wait, I think I see part of the top of it. Yep, that's it. Ok, start digging with snow shove I've brought with. Oops, plastic shovel is bouncing of the hard packed snow. OK, I'll try further out. Repeat previous two sentences about five times until I'm at edge of roof, where I'm able to get some leverage. Under the foot of alternating layers of heavy wet snow and compacted sleet, is a nice layer of ice at least an inch thick left from last week's major storm. Shovel snow off roof over to buried vent. Begin wondering, how much weight is actually on the roof right now? Decide I'd rather not think about that. Clear away snow covering most of the vent. Now I need to get the ice up, since I can see water moving around under it when I'm walking. Go back to edge of roof and begin carefully breaking up ice without damaging rubber roofing surface. Break shovel #1. Crawl through window, go get shovel #2, go back through window doing graceful Parachute Landing Fall on snow on roof. Clear away ice, check roof, looks okay. Decide to remove more snow and ice from roof to diminish weight. Get half of the snow off, break shovel blade #2, and try to commit suicide by slicing wrist on broken plastic handle at same time. Decide it may be time to see how the leak inside is doing at this point. Go through window, decide to rest in bathtub under window for few minutes since I'm laying in it flat on my back anyway. Get up, stagger downstairs. Behold!! Leak has stopped. Reward self with extended sit on couch and computer time. Decide not to go outside anymore today unless life depends on it.