Intermission

If last week's Ice Storm From Hell wasn't enough to make me sick to death of this endless winter (hacking through the 1/8" thick sheet of solid ice covering my entire car after work last Tuesday took a week's supply of brute force), then an epic blizzard on Friday and Saturday sure as hell was. We all knew it was coming, and it showed up right on schedule and dumped something like 2 feet of snow all over the place by the time it was over.

The shittiest part of this, predictably, was that I had to be at the store on Saturday morning in order to squeeze whatever blood from the proverbial stone that could be squoze out of that day, and what a complete freakin' disaster that was.

Business-wise, I suppose the workday itself could have been worse as far as people were concerned: generally, the folks who show up at the store on days like that are not the bright bulbs you'd care to be snowed in with ("WOW, MAN! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GUYS WERE DUMB ENOUGH TO BE OPEN TODAY!" they typically exclaim, perhaps not catching the irony in their own words). With only, uh, eight customers in the store the entire time I was open, it was a pretty peaceful day all things considered. I got some shelving done, shoveled and salted the front walk, caught up the orders, et cetera. As the afternoon wore on and the visibility actually worsened (it was maybe 250-500 feet on the way in that morning), I was given the green light to get the hell out of Dodge before sundown. We closed a bit later with a pathetic sales total, about three grand short of where we were shooting for. That was pretty bad, and on top of an abbreviated (and dead) Friday, and an abbreviated (and dead) Tuesday (a lot of Tuesdays recently have sported pretty terrible weather, come to think of it), the month of March is already looking like a lost cause unless we can turn this boat around in a hurry.

While the day itself was tranquil, the drive home (in the middle of a Level 2 Snow Emergency, whatever the hell that is), was a complete nightmare. I closed the store at 5 P.M. and waded into the parking lot drifts to get my car warmed up, and let it idle while I re-shoveled the front walk. When everything was finally ready, I jumped into the car, popped it into reverse, and floored it, going about five feet or so backwards before getting hung up in another drift (the snowplow guy had just showed up as I was leaving, and he had a long way to go before he reached my part of the lot). After some gunning of the engine, I headed back into the store to retrieve the shovel and dig myself out, openly cursing our decision to open up that day.

By the time I had finally burst out of that drift, it was nearly 5:30 and I was so happy to finally be moving that I neglected to realize I still had the shovel in my passenger seat until I was more than halfway home. Ugghhh... HULK SMASH.

No, wait! My co-worker (Brian) lives on my way home now! I can just drop by his place and leave the shovel with him since he is working on Sunday anyway!

Wooo! Great idea!

Oh wait ... back up. Hold it right there.

Whaaaat?

When you went back into the store to grab the shovel to dig yourself out, you didn't remember to lock the door behind you when you left, did you?

Awwwwww shit!

Yeah, thought so.

So, I turned around angrily and returned to the store, taking care this time to stick to the plowed areas of the parking lot (and very nearly getting stuck again anyway). Luckily, I had indeed left the door unlocked, so the trip back was certainly worthwhile, if aggravating.

It was about halfway home again when my mind chirped again: hey, uh, didn't you intend to bring home a bag of packing supplies?

You know what? Screw the goddamned packing supplies.

Roger that.

Right now, the roads are clear and dry, and snow is piled up in conical sight line-blocking hills all over the place. Perhaps it's me, but I detect a bit of a bias towards SUV drivers in the way snow piles are arranged at the front entrances of plazas and driveways, completely blocking your car-eye view of oncoming traffic. Getting out of our plaza at work has become a pretty dangerous proposition since Saturday afternoon. Here's hoping the melt-off hits quickly before someone gets killed.

Anyway, the suffering is only in the here and now. Three weeks from today (and, hopefully, about 20 degrees-and-change north of our current temperature), Sarah and I will both be in attendance down at the Jak ... uh, Progressive Field for Opening Day 2008. With a bit of luck, we'll soon have a bitchin' brand new digital camera with us in order to take plenty of slick pix of the day's events, followed with mucho footage of the kitties, the condo and points all around the area (and I'll soon be putting up a link to the Flickr account you can scope 'em all out at).

Courage.