22/365- Piling Up

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Jan 222011
 

35 mm prime lens, f/1.8, ISO 800, 1/100th sec

Time: 8:30 pm
Place: Driveway

If we have another big storm, I don’t know where I’m going to put more snow!

Wednesday thru Friday I was in the Maryland area for work, I flew home late Friday afternoon and landed around 6pm.  Veronica spent the day at a conference and arrived home with the kids just shortly before I did, around 7pm.  We got about 6″ of fresh snow during the day and couldn’t get into our driveway, so we parked on the street and I went right to work cleaning up.  I figure that in the last 10 days we’ve gotten somewhere between 28-30″ of snow, and it could look worse, since after Tuesday’s snowfall it turned to rain and compacted what was on the ground already.

To emphasize how much snow there is, the ground on top of the retaining wall is normally flat!

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Speaking of piling up, work is getting crazy busy with multiple deadlines, with very short lead times, for some high-visibility projects that I’m involved with.  Things have gotten bad enough that we’re cutting short our family visit to NY this weekend so that I can go into the office on Sunday for a good part of the day.  Friday was my nephew’s 1st birthday and the party is at my sisters house on Saturday afternoon.  We were planning on spending Saturday night there then visiting with other family on Sunday morning before driving home.  Now we’ll be coming back late Saturday night, doing the Boston-NY round trip in one day, so I can work on Sunday.

I think I’ll be able to relax and breathe on Thursday, once the deadlines are past and I have the day off…

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Kindness

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Jan 192011
 

Once again, the Boston area got a bit of snow of Tuesday, 4-5″ on top of the 18″ we got last week. This time, while DBs school was canceled, my office was open and I had some stuff I had to do before my trip today, so I went to work while Veronica stayed home with the kids.

Oh, a bit about DB’s school closing. Veronica signed up for the reverse-911 service in town that notifies us if school is closed.  We got up like any other morning and there was no message, so we assumed school was open, even though it was snowing.  Hey, it’s New England, we can handle snow!  A few minutes after 7am DB is walking to the corner bus stop when a woman pulls up alongside him and says “hey, didn’t you hear, school is closed today”.  So much for the reverse-911 system!

Anyway, the storm was forecast to turn to rain due to rising temperatures during the day.  For those of you fortunate enough not to live in a cold climate, you wouldn’t know that trying to shovel or use a snowblower on a snow/rain mix is futile, because that shit is heavy! Since Veronica was home she volunteered to do some shoveling before it turned to rain, at least of the driveway, so there wouldn’t be as much for me to deal with when I got home.

The storm turned out to be a little worse than expected and my company decided to send everyone home around 1pm.  Before I got out of there Veronica texted me this picture, along with something about being a damsel in distress having it’s advantages.

I didn’t quite get what she was talking about, but I had to admit the driveway looked pretty damn good.

As it turns out, someone plowed our driveway for us! The town relies an a small army of contractors to keep the roads cleared, a collection of landscapers, general contractors and others who own trucks suitable for plowing.  One of these guys was plowing the streets in our neighborhood and saw Veronica struggling with the wet, heavy snow so he volunteered to clear our driveway if she would move her car. I’m sure he didn’t have to ask her twice!

All I had to do when I got home was clear the walkways and the areas of the driveway he couldn’t get to with his plow (see that big pile of snow on the left side of the picture? The driveway wraps around behind that to the attached 1 car garage).

He saved me A LOT of work!

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Day 13/365 Buried

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Jan 132011
 

35 mm prime lens, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 1/10th sec

Time: 5:45 pm
Place: Front walkway

Typically we expect the weather forecasters to overstate the possible magnitude of a storm.
Not this time, if anything we got more snow than was expected!

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Day 11/365- Fixed, Sorta

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Jan 112011
 

18-105 mm lens at 25 mm, ISO 1600, f/4, 1/30th sec

Time: 7:30 pm
Place: Garage

The last time it snowed a lot, 2 weeks ago, I was starting the snowblower when the pull cord broke.  Fortunately this happened as the engine started running, so I was able to get the snow cleared.  With the 8-12″ of snow we’re forecast to get Tuesday night and into Wednesday, I figure it was time I pulled the starter assembly off and try to fix it!

I was successful, for the most part.  The snowblower starts, but the cord doesn’t retract all the way anymore :-/

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Day 9/365- Stuck

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Jan 092011
 

35 mm prime lens, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 1/13th sec

Time: 9:40 pm
Place: Driveway

This is a funny story.  Earlier in the evening I took a few photos outside but when I got inside and imported them into the computer, I really didn’t like any of them.  I’m sitting on the couch thinking about photo ideas when the doorbell rings.  A young man pulled into our driveway, thinking it was someone else’s house, and now he can’t get out of our slippery, uphill driveway.

I was stuck for an idea, and now he was stuck too.

I get dressed and head outside to see what we can do.  It’s not uncommon for Veronica’s Saturn to have trouble getting out of our driveway when there’s snow, so I have a 5 gallon bucket of rock salt nearby.  A couple of cups of rock salt around the kids rear wheels and he was on his way.  Then I went back inside to grab my camera.

I did tease the kid that he was lucky it was half-time of the football game!

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Day 7/365- Crystals

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Jan 072011
 

Time: 5:15pm
Place: Front yard

Oftentimes a week after a storm the snow just looks awful, all ugly and dirty.
Sometimes, it looks pretty cool!

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Day 362- Snow Drifts, and an Asshole

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Dec 282010
 

Time: 9:30am
Place: Yard

With the 40 mph+ winds that came with the snowstorm, snow drifts were inevitable.  On one hand, parts of my driveway were practically devoid of snow.  On the other hand parts of my driveway had 2 ft of densely packed snow…

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Monday evening I was sitting on the couch and noticed this car in the street down the block a little bit.  I watched it for a few minutes, it was obvious no one was in it, it was just sitting there.  It bothered me enough that I had to get dressed and go outside to see just how much it was blocking the street, since from inside my perspective was off.  Is anyone surprised that I brought my camera outside with me?

Who parks like this?  Oh right, some asshole who thinks the world revolves around him…

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Day 361- Solitary Shoveler

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Dec 272010
 

Time: 8:30 pm
Place: Home

As nasty as it was out (you can’t see the snow because of the shutter speed I used, but trust me, it was bad!), I can only think that my neighbor across the street has to work on Monday despite the state of emergency!

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Day 357- Snowflakes

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Dec 232010
 

Time: 9:00 pm
Place: Backyard

So much for the chance of flurries without any accumulation, there was about 3″ of new snow when I headed to bed!

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Day 356- Threesome (of photographs)

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Dec 222010
 

Time: 7:30 am
Place: Commute

We had the first snow accumulation of the season Monday night/Tuesday morning.  Now this is New England, you would think people would remember how to drive in snow from year to year.  However, my commute taking twice as long as usual suggests otherwise…

Time: 4:30 pm
Place: Living Room

Monday evening I was sitting on the couch when I heard glass break.  This candle was burning inside the ceramic gingerbread house, the wax was just about gone, the glass heated up and shattered.  Oops, at least no one got hurt!

Time: 9:30 pm
Place: Front yard

That snow storm? It ruined any chance I had of seeing the lunar eclipse early Tuesday morning, which I seriously considered getting up for.  I had read a post at Digital Photography School about photographing the moon, so I figured I could at least test out their advice Tuesday evening, when the sky was clear.  Click it to open in a new window then zoom in to get more of the detail, I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

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