At this point it's 6:30 Sunday evening. I may or may not finish this entry until tomorrow. It has been a cold, snowy, miserable day. It has stopped snowing. After last week the snow amounts, somewhere between 4 and 6 inches, is really no big deal. Messy but easy to deal with. The problem is that it's cold, about 20 at this point, and the wind is gusting up to 40 miles per hour. I hear the eerie howl of the wind as it slices through the wrought iron railing on the front porch, just the other side of the desk I am sitting behind. I was originally going out this evening but the plunging temperature magnified by the wind has changed my plans. I'm staying home. I did venture out about 9 this morning. The driving was slow and sloppy. If it wasn't for the wind I would have gone out tonight. The snow is cleared from the roads and because of the wind there is very little snow on the cars. The snow itself is light and powdery. The kind of snow that's great for skiing. Something I tried once to no success what so ever. At least I didn't break anything.
Update. Monday Feb. 18. I was falling asleep as I wrote the above. It's now late in the morning. I have been doing some rearranging of things. I realize that I need to get rid of things. That's not really a great revelation it's something that I have been avoiding for some time. The sun is out and it looks nice but it's still cold and if I don't have to go out I won't.

Now on to another matter. I have received comments from "Anonymous" on a couple of posts. Now if this person wants to remain "Anonymous" that's fine with me. He has been very complimentary of my posts and I do thank him for the kind words.
I looked at the comments section of the Blogger dashboard and for the first time I checked the spam section and found 23 comments from this person starting on Oct. 1, 2012. Once again they were all very complimentary but they all featured a link to this persons web site or should I say sites. These sites seem to feature various products and subjects including reviews of electronic cigarettes and something called New York Call Girls. Truthfully I am not interested in anything he is selling. He complimented my blog for it's look and content asking me where I got the layouts and color schemes. I am a complete computer/cyber world dummy. Aside from pictures that I have taken or video's I have made, including the new header photo, and the words in the blog,  everything on my page, except for the colorful fish, originates from Blogger. He is still welcome to visit and leave comments if he so desires and if he had a blog here on blogger I would visit it and comment. This is not meant as attack at all. As I said previously all the comments have been quite nice and as far as pushing his own web sites I suppose it's ok. If any of you wish to visit them be my guest. They seem to be money making ventures. My page is a simple exercise in having a bit of fun by throwing some words together sometimes sprinkled with photo's and video's. I have no experience as a writer. This is it. It started with Spaces and continues here. I want to thank those of you who visit on a regular basis. You are a small but loyal group who I consider friends. Good solid people that have always been nice to me. I hope I never disappoint or upset any of you.

Well it's time for me to get off my derriere. I think I will go out and run an errand, maybe take a picture or two. First I have to clean up the mess I have created while trying to neaten things up. But before I go here's something I hope gives you a laugh.

I'm outta here.


      
    

It was a little more than a snowstorm...

As I begin this blog it's 10:32 pm on Friday February 8, 2013. At this point there is about a foot of snow on the ground. I will not finish writing this tonight. Hey I do have to sleep. Work on Friday was as expected. Very busy! At least this time people had a legitimate excuse to panic. People stock up if 6" of snow is predicted. I think this stems from 1978. They overreacted because that storm dropped 27"  on top of two previous large snowstorms. It was a gigantic mess with cars stranded on major highways. 100 people died. This storm may or may not top 27' but around here we will still get around 2' some places 3'. This is a blizzard. Sort of snowstorm combined with a hurricane. Winds are gusting to about 60 mph as I write this. There are about 250,000 homes without power in Massachusetts. The governor declared that all vehicles except plows, emergency vehicles and news media, off all roads by 4 pm this afternoon. Controversial to some, but as far as I'm concerned it was a smart decision. At 10:56 we just had a wind gust of 76 mph in Boston. 
Here's a shot from the parking lot of the store where I work at about 10 am this morning. It had just begun to snow.


10 am

  The penalty for being caught driving is a $500 and up to 1 year in jail. That sounds pretty extreme, not the fine but the possible jail sentence. Still it seems to have worked. It should be over some time tomorrow afternoon.

It is now 11:13 and I  just heard on the news that there are now 300,000 homes without power.

I left work at about 2 pm and the place was still hopping. Here's a picture of my car in the driveway at about 2:30.

Several hours later.

Here's a video made with a 5 mega pixel camera aimed a the television of some of the storm coverage Friday night.

 

Fast forward. At this moment it's about 5:15 on Saturday. All the shoveling is done. I didn't do it myself. I had help. My landlord has a snow blower but as we got closer to the street the snow was more compacted due to the constant plowing. That was the toughest part of the whole endeavour. I didn't time the whole thing but it must of taken 6 or 7 hours. Locally we got about 28 " of snow. A couple of inches more than Boston about 5 miles away.

This was  about 9 am this morning just outside my door.

 

 At this point it's early Saturday evening. I am tired and sore. Legs, back and arms. Apart from that I feel pretty good. It was quite a workout. I made pasta primavera for supper or at least my version of it.
Here are the results of all our hard work.

  

OK. We didn't shovel the street.

People along the coastline south of Boston really got hit hard. The ocean was very angry. That's part of the price you pay for living across the street from the ocean.

So that about wraps things up from here. We don't always get the most snow, but due to the location, these wild scenarios happen from time to time. Last year we only got a few inches of snow all winter. I suppose this could happen again. Unlike the other states affected, our Governor ordered a ban on all driving and it was a wise decision. The ban is now lifted but I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
That's it. Over and out.
I'm outta here.

Blizzard

So we're getting a blizzard on Friday. They are talking about one to two feet of snow. It's been a while since we have had any substantial snowfall. It will be busy at all the supermarkets. I can understand why though. It was 1978. Late in January we had a 21 inches of snow. That's a pretty good size storm but not all that unusual around here. It had happened before. Then on Feb. 8 we had another storm. A blizzard actually with winds up to 85 mph. Sort of like a hurricane in a snowstorm. 27 inches on top of nearly two feet of snow was already on the ground. Everything ground to a halt. I was supposed to work until midnight, the snow was coming down, the wind was howling. The store was devoid of customers for almost an hour. Everybody just wanted to go home. They finally closed the store at 8 o'clock. I didn't live all that far from the store, maybe four miles but it was tough going in my little Volkswagen bug. It snowed for about thirty six hours. When it was all over there was four feet of snow on the ground.

Ever since that storm, the mere mention of snow sends everybody into a food buying frenzy. I can certainly understand this when there is a big storm. You were not allowed to drive for about a week. It didn't really matter because you couldn't get out of your driveway let alone go down the street. About thirtyfive hundred cars were stranded on Rt.128, a highway that loops around the Boston area.

Rt,128 in 1978.

I'm not sure where this is in the area but I do remember scenes like this. 

Well we have another big one coming on Friday going into Saturday. And as of this writing (9:05 on Wed. evening) they are calling for around 2 feet of snow with high tides (moon is full) and winds from 35-65 mph. Friday should be a feeding frenzy at the store. I am not looking forward to this. I have flashlights and batteries and candles just in case. Maybe I won't even have to work on Saturday which I suspect will be a pretty quiet day.

One thing I do remember from '78 was after everything was said and done the weather was beautiful. People were skiing down the street or using snowmobiles. I was lucky because I had a supermarket about a five minute walk  from my house. I never lost power and had enough food though I did do a lot of shoveling.

I know I mention Martha's Vineyard a lot. My last time down there I took picture of the sunset on the opposite side of the island. I put them on a disc and misplaced said disc. I found it a couple of days ago. I don't know if I have enough to make a decent slideshow but here are a couple of them.

 

 

 Well that's it for now kiddies. I'm getting myself ready for whatever is going to happen. Should be fun.
I'm outta here.

Started writing this on Sunday morning finished on Monday.

So here I sit on a quiet Sunday morning. I may not finish this until this afternoon at some time. Do I really care about the Super Bowl? I may or may not watch it. I am not a die hard football fan unless, of course, my team is involved. They came close but no cigar. I suppose I could root for San Francisco to beat the team that beat my team, then again my team got beat fair and square. I really harbor no grudge against The Baltimore Ravens. To me it's only sports not life or death. Entertainment, like watching a favorite television series. I do like the city of San Francisco. I feel a kinship in as much as Boston and San Francisco share a lot of the same qualities being cities steeped in culture. It looks beautiful and it's a place that I would like to visit. I have been to California a couple of times. Once in 1979 to visit a buddy stationed on an Air Force base near a little town called Victerville. It was in the middle of a desert. My buddy, a local boy from here loved it. Me? I wasn't to keen on the blistering summer heat though it did afford me the opportunity to visit nearby Las Vegas for a couple of days. I did gamble away $50 because if your there you might as well give it a shot once, though $50 was a lot more money back then. I went back in 2006 to visit another friend of mine. She lived closer to the coast and the coastline there is quite beautiful. I enjoyed my week there. My favorites were Sea World in San Diego and Venice Beach. A very funky place that quite appealed to me. There are the body builders working out by the beach. All strutting around with a "Look at me! Aren't I fantastic?" attitude. I could have done without that but it's a different world than where I come from. If I ever would move to California though it would not be in the southern part it would be San Francisco. That of course, will never happen because I am a dyed in the wool Bostonian, even though I live just outside the city. Massachusetts may be a national punching bag on many issues but if you look at state by state and world rankings we have nothing to be ashamed about at all.  
 
I see that I have strayed from what I was originally going to write. I guess that's what happens when you drink a lot of coffee on lazy Sunday, now afternoon. What was I originally going to write anyway?

There's a very light coating of snow on the ground and there are flurries lightly falling from the grey skies. I suppose some of that California weather wouldn't be too bad right about now. According to the weatherman this morning, normally at this point in the winter we should have had an average of 23 inches of snow instead we've had about 3 or 4 inches. Now if we could just eliminate the cold. 

OK now it's Monday morning. A few things came up and I had to stop writing. I did watch the game and oh well, the Ravens won. And so we move on.

Once in a while a customer will do something that will perplex and amuse you at the same time. I was at one of our wall cases at work. My department is at one end of the store. There are doors at either end and one in the middle. There is a door right near where I was working. A woman walked towards the door and stops and then says, "How do I operate this door?"

How do you operate a door that has big red letters that spell out "AUTOMATIC SLIDING DOORS". How did you get in the building in the first place? Have you been asleep for the last ten years and they built the store around you?

I told her, "Just take a step or two forward and the doors will slide open automatically." Hence the wording, "AUTOMATIC SLIDING DOORS".

I know spring is near. Just as they do in Pennsylvania with Punxsutawney Phil, we have started a new tradition up here, well at least in the store where I work. We saw our first rat peaking out of trash barrel at the entrance to a park next door. Now I couldn't tell you if he saw his shadow so we aren't sure about length of winter. We named him Apoxuponthee Ed.

The weather has been pretty gloomy and cold. It made me look at some pictures and video from Martha's Vineyard. It was warm and serene in those pictures and videos. Serene because we always go just before or just after the tourist season. We're heading back in May.
I've posted these before but they're worth a second look for there calming effect.
So if it's cold and gloomy where you are, take a little mind vacation with me to Martha's Vineyard.

 I suppose this is one of the most disjointed blog entries I have ever written. It's taken me two days to put this together due to unforeseen circumstances. Nothing bad, just trivial things that happen in everyday life. Apart from some chores that I must do, I plan on doing absolutely nothing before going back to work tomorrow.

 I'm outta here.