Stormin' Normal
Mar. 8th, 2008 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThere is a point, in every Western New York winter, where I slam my overcoat against an interior surface (shaking snow all about), kick off my soggy shoes (more snow), and cry, to anyone who might be listening,
"THIS ISN'T FUNNY ANYMORE."
Let the record reflect that in the Year of Our Lord 2008 and of the Independence of the United States the 231st, that unfunny date was, and remains, the eighth of March.
Beware the Ides, my ass.
(Sidenote that only the Rochester people will find funny: During the 18th century exploration of Michigan, some fur traders came upon a Native American tribe with a boy who had been born with no eyelids. They prayed to the godlike palefaces before them to do something to heal the boy. Fortunately, the one Jew in the party was also an experienced moyel, and he deftly removed the boy's foreskin, halved it with his knife, and sewed it on above the boy's eyes. While initially grateful for the arrival of sound sleep, the boy became the butt of the other braves' jokes, and ultimately took out his frustrations on his would-be healers by rising to power in the Ottawa tribe and led a major attack on British fortresses during the French and Indian War. Sadly for him, though, he is known in the accounts of the day by the name the cruel boys bestowed on him: Dick Ide Pontiac.)
Somebody up there must have heard my bitching about the recurring pattern of midweek bad weather always following pristine, springlike weekends, because boy, have we got a doozy on our hands. A Winter Storm Warning of Doom was called for and was set to begin at 4 p.m. yesterday, precisely the hour I was to be meeting with a Rochester client. Any hopes of riding ahead of the front were dashed by 1, when the snow had already begun its steady falling and sticking. It took over half an hour to get even within sight of the Thruway- or what would've been sight of it most days- and I did the weather math and called the client to beg out of the appointment. This closed the books on the single worst week I've had since I began solo practice close to two years ago- a clusterfuck of broken connections due to weather and illness and misunderstandings.
It was all supposed to be out of our system, mostly, by the end of the day today, and by mid-afternoon, there didn't seem to be all that much more to it, either on the ground or blowing around, so I finally set out for some exercise and errands round 3:30 this afternoon....
whereupon it promptly started getting ugly again. By the time I reached the grocery store, they were banning shopping carts from their parking lot. The radio on the last leg home cheerfully predicted that we were due for another foot of the stuff tonight alone- but cheer up, that it's supposed to be well above freezing by the middle of next week.
At least at some point in my absence, our snowplow guys showed up. We have an interesting contract with them; we pay a flat rate for the entire winter, unless the total published snowfall for the area goes above 100 inches, in which case we get surcharged 10 percent after the fact. In my way of thinking, this is like the traditional Red Chinese practice of executing prisoners with a single gunshot and then billing the condemned man's family for the cost of the bullet. We'd been comfortably within the 100-inch margin as long as we didn't have a bitch-ugly March. You know, like the one we're having.
On the bright side, I have noplace I have to go tomorrow, we have good music and (at least in my case, with the final disk of Dexter season one) compelling drama to watch, and no matter how bad it gets out there, we are guaranteed to have one fewer hour of misery once we set the clocks forward in the morning.
Plus maybe I can come up with a really offensive joke about Billy Fucillo.
"THIS ISN'T FUNNY ANYMORE."
Let the record reflect that in the Year of Our Lord 2008 and of the Independence of the United States the 231st, that unfunny date was, and remains, the eighth of March.
Beware the Ides, my ass.
(Sidenote that only the Rochester people will find funny: During the 18th century exploration of Michigan, some fur traders came upon a Native American tribe with a boy who had been born with no eyelids. They prayed to the godlike palefaces before them to do something to heal the boy. Fortunately, the one Jew in the party was also an experienced moyel, and he deftly removed the boy's foreskin, halved it with his knife, and sewed it on above the boy's eyes. While initially grateful for the arrival of sound sleep, the boy became the butt of the other braves' jokes, and ultimately took out his frustrations on his would-be healers by rising to power in the Ottawa tribe and led a major attack on British fortresses during the French and Indian War. Sadly for him, though, he is known in the accounts of the day by the name the cruel boys bestowed on him: Dick Ide Pontiac.)
Somebody up there must have heard my bitching about the recurring pattern of midweek bad weather always following pristine, springlike weekends, because boy, have we got a doozy on our hands. A Winter Storm Warning of Doom was called for and was set to begin at 4 p.m. yesterday, precisely the hour I was to be meeting with a Rochester client. Any hopes of riding ahead of the front were dashed by 1, when the snow had already begun its steady falling and sticking. It took over half an hour to get even within sight of the Thruway- or what would've been sight of it most days- and I did the weather math and called the client to beg out of the appointment. This closed the books on the single worst week I've had since I began solo practice close to two years ago- a clusterfuck of broken connections due to weather and illness and misunderstandings.
It was all supposed to be out of our system, mostly, by the end of the day today, and by mid-afternoon, there didn't seem to be all that much more to it, either on the ground or blowing around, so I finally set out for some exercise and errands round 3:30 this afternoon....
whereupon it promptly started getting ugly again. By the time I reached the grocery store, they were banning shopping carts from their parking lot. The radio on the last leg home cheerfully predicted that we were due for another foot of the stuff tonight alone- but cheer up, that it's supposed to be well above freezing by the middle of next week.
At least at some point in my absence, our snowplow guys showed up. We have an interesting contract with them; we pay a flat rate for the entire winter, unless the total published snowfall for the area goes above 100 inches, in which case we get surcharged 10 percent after the fact. In my way of thinking, this is like the traditional Red Chinese practice of executing prisoners with a single gunshot and then billing the condemned man's family for the cost of the bullet. We'd been comfortably within the 100-inch margin as long as we didn't have a bitch-ugly March. You know, like the one we're having.
On the bright side, I have noplace I have to go tomorrow, we have good music and (at least in my case, with the final disk of Dexter season one) compelling drama to watch, and no matter how bad it gets out there, we are guaranteed to have one fewer hour of misery once we set the clocks forward in the morning.
Plus maybe I can come up with a really offensive joke about Billy Fucillo.
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Date: 2008-03-09 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 01:40 am (UTC)