It’s so much snow. I mean – wow. Obama took a lot of flak about speaking his mind regarding DC’s response to a couple of inches of snow in December. He’s definitely been silent during THIS storm. It’s paralyzing. There’s simply no place to move the snow TO.
Trees are bowing, subservient to the coverage, and friends have had roofs and cars literally cave under the weight. 18-wheelers are freely distributing ice bergs to the surrounding traffic as they reach highway speeds, chunks of snow and ice the size of Volkswagons flying off to tumble in the sky before shattering all over the road. I wish they were clean enough to get the little “how am I driving” numbers off of them.
I REALLY wish I just had a rocket launcher. It would at least melt some of the snow.
We spent most of the day before my birthday struggling out from under the snow. It was a lot of effort just to get the door open. When I finally got out we started making trenches down the steps…. making our escape. Connecting to the neighbour’s trenches…
I’m impressed. I’ve never seen this much snow, stacking on top of what we already had, with more on the way. It’s been hard on the band with all the cancelations – but even harder on the venues. A couple of friends’ bars and coffeehouses are in very real danger because of the loss of revenue. I’m sure retailers are in the same dire straits – and somewhere there are tons of people simply sitting on mounds of cash because they haven’t gone out and spent it on us.
Wandering around Catonsville and Western Baltimore, we’ve been fortunate with the weather (not counting that whole 2′ of snow thing). Now it’s calm and clear. Not blustery, beautiful sculptures of snow are still standing tall on everything. By now we’ve gotten Kristen’s car out, but mine’s completely buried.
A lot of friends are doing webcasts – but I do that every week and am frankly kind of bored of it. I’ve sat in the basement, recorded old songs and new songs and thought about buying a gadget to further that cause. I’m having issues with latency and haven’t decided if that’s software or hardware. I’ve been toying with Facebook and have decided it’s NOT a very good band tool. I’ve been toying with the cats and have decided they are not very good conversationalists – and though in general I’m a pretty happy stuck-in-the-house kind of guy, I’m excited about today, our first day out of the house since Thursday night.
As we drive down this alien vision of I-95 I’m looking at all the trees arched over and onto themselves. Gigantic mountains of snow form a trench flashing past and road signs are almost covered. The radio is full of people voicing their frustrations with the power companies and the city trucks and the traffic and the people who are using their cell phones, but the sky is pristine and blue. The weather tells us that despite all the blazing sunshine we’ll get very little melting between now and the next snowstorm, expected in about 48 hours.
My birthday was spent shoveling – with a surprise visit from Brennan and Tori who walked over to present me with birthday cookies. Amy made birthday chili. Kristen got me Zombieland on DVD. My friends know me well. Syfy channel posted a new episode of Caprica and Adult Swim showed a new episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The only present I REALLY didn’t like was the new theme song. I would like to file an official complaint.
Wow – we’ve reached a point of I-95 that’s just – impassable. Caked ice and salt in the centre lanes form a hard crust bumpier than any unpaved West Virginia road. Kristen’s doing a great job avoiding the worst of it, swerving onto the surprisingly clear shoulder and back again.
It’s inconvenient and it’s a lot of work and frankly it’s dangerous – but we don’t get too much wild adventure in our modern Lives and when will we do battle like this again? Let us bring on the Pansorbjorne and we can truly Live a winter fantasy that has more to do with AT-ATs, White Queens and resurrected mammoths than it does with Santa Claus and chipper little red-nosed reindeer. Every once in while let us battle with sharpened claw and tooth and knife vs Yeti and Wampa rather than our simple Facebook angsts and paycheck concerns. It reminds me of when a gig was about pulling my nails off with my strings, rather than just rolling my eyes through a difficult soundcheck.
In short – it sucks, but I kind of like it. I just wish I had some (flaming) snow pants.
