Well, I set a new personal best.

I got the driveway done in just under 3 hours. Considering how much snow there was, this was no small feat. After dealing with the driveway for over a decade now, I have a system (which will make the people who know me smile to themselves) – I start at the bottom and work my way up.

The house is on a street with a double yellow and we get lots more traffic than we probably should, shoveling down at the bottom is always dangerous because of all the idiots driving SUVs who believe four wheel drive will somehow compensate for slippery driving conditions. It’s amazing to see people whizzing by.

Anyway, since the street is a busy one, we are fortunate in that the plows go by regularly and the street was clean and passable today (if somewhat narrower). The flip side to this is we get plowed a lot. Bad because the driveway is wide and all the repeated plowing becomes a densely packed mixture of snow, slush and ice. It’s the really heavy stuff that you’ve got to work to get through.

I would’ve held off until tomorrow to shovel, it’s supposed to get warmer and hopefully by the end of the week most of the snow will be gone on its own, I just wanted to put a stop to the annoying ringing of the doorbell by the groups of shovelers roaming the streets looking for Xmas cash. It wasn’t even noon and the doorbell had been rung twice, nevermind the snow was still coming down lightly this morning.

I didn’t have to be anywhere and it was a Sunday anyway so, I figured I’d get around to clearing the driveway... eventually. Then, the more I thought about it, I realized people were desperate to get out there.

It just struck me odd everyone would be in a rush to go out - holiday shopping and the like I guess.

Then I got to thinking about how it was a commentary on the pace people live their lives nowadays - in that people always have to be on the go, go, go. When I was a kid, if we had a snowstorm like this, it would’ve shut things down for a few days. Now, with Doppler Radar, Computer Modeling and Satellite Photography they do a much better job of predicting where, when and how much snow we’ll get.

It gives one a great deal of respect for Tiros 1.