Things that are not in my living room #1
At least not yet. Last week, while the GG was in Florida, we had all of this gorgeous, warm (sort of), sunshiney non-Michigan-type weather. This week? Snow and more snow. Ice drives to work. Shoveling. Crap, I am the only person here at the Landfill at the moment and somebody just clinked ice-cubes. You guys… Go drive the Ryerson somewhere or something.
It’s a little late in the winter for me to do my usual speech about sidewalk snow removal, which is that whatever you do to clean your sidewalk, you also have to salt it. If you do not, ice will form underneath whatever snow falls on top of your carefully cleaned sidewalk and unsuspecting walkers will fall on their you-know-whats. They might crack their skull or break their backs or pulverize their pelvis.
Here on The Planet Ann Arbor, we are mandated to clear whatever sidewalks are in front of our house. I have been slodging along all week shoveling snow and I love to do that up to a point. Except for the vee-hickle shuffling so that all three (yes) vee-hickles are in the driveway before the plow comes along. And then. We ran out of driveway salt earlier in the week. Last night, I asked the GG to get more salt. He did. Sort of. Except that a horrendous mis-communication between him and some clerk at Stadium Hardware led him to bring home water softener salt. Not the right thing. Driveway salt consists of relatively small grains and when you sprinkle it around, it melts relatively large areas. This water softener salt consists of HUGE grains and each grain only melts the immediate area around the grain of salt. It’s okay. It’s the end of February. It’ll snow some more. When we get into about the middle of March, I usually don’t even bother to shovel any more. It usually melts the next day. To heck with the dern mandate.
Good night and keep shoveling if you can. It’s pretty darn good exercise,
KW
February 25th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Snow shoveling seems like it would be invigorating and good exercise to me, but then I’ve never done it–nor do I know anything about salt. Good old west coast marine climate. This was a very instructive post!!
February 26th, 2010 at 8:22 am
if they’re going to actually enforce that mandate, they need to head to the campus area for starters. not campus itself, but the myriad student housing areas where shoveling is…. sometimes non-existent. and then the snow gets packed down, and freezes and ….. uh oh – you got me started.
February 26th, 2010 at 9:13 am
Okay, NPJane got me going.
In my experience, the “mandate” is pretty spuriously enforced. If I have it right, somebody has to file a complaint for the snow police to actually give out a ticket.
One year, a neighbor who has a corner lot had the whole thing well cleared. Then the plow came along and blocked the end of the sidewalk (where it meets the street) with a cement-like pile of snow. Somebody with a supposedly “disabled” child complained that it prevented the kid from getting to school, and my friend got a warning. Now, do they plow the entrances to the *schoooool*? Not the one by my house. I know. I walk through there at least twice a day.