Schreiber

7:35: Well, I guess that answers the question of “Are we going to lose power today?”

Now we have the new and exciting question,”when do we get it back?”

8:35: Apparently the answer is, NOW!
And so now the question becomes, "but for how long?"
( ETA: )

The things I always forget: that eight inches of snow means PILES of snow several feet deep, and that cross country skiing is frequently an extremely sweaty business.

I went for a walk last night around 9:30, because I hadn't been outside all day. Thin cloud, so Jupiter and Saturn were hidden, but there wasn't that sense of impending storm that you sometimes get; and nothing was coming down. The wind gusted in a way that I associate with unquiet summer nights; sometimes, then, it's followed by torrential thunderstorms, other times the trees just sway a bit for a few hours. The snow must have started shortly after I came in.

I hauled myself out of bed at what, by recent standards, was a remarkably reasonable hour, ate breakfast, and did a half-ass job of shoveling the sidewalk in front of the house. I didn't even try to do the driveway. There is more shoveling in my future.

The antiphon for today - Come, and teach us the way of prudence - is particularly poignant this year.

Yesterday was not a good day for parking.

This was the case all over New Haven, where Sunday's storm (which delivered the classic shoreline two inches of sleet, before turning to rain and then freezing over) turned onstreet parking into a nightmare of snowplowed ridge-and-furrow, over ice with zero traction.* I helped some poor lady out of the snow a block from our house, then patted myself on the back and reflected on all the great karma I was accumulating.

Apparently it doesn't work like that.
( How I dislocated my shoulder—again )