Hunkering

We have been hunkered down since Friday night with this huge snowstorm howling outside. This morning the weather guy on one channel was giving the official definition of a blizzard—a certain wind speed, snow fall and visibility—and declared that we hadn’t yet met those criteria but then he looked at the camera and said, “But, that’s pretty much what we have out there—it’s a blizzard.”

Kathy tried to clear a little path by the backdoor, since we could hardly open it against the snow, but much of her efforts were obliterated by the blowing and drifting snow. I stuck a tape measure into the snow by the backdoor Saturday morning and it was nine inches deep. Now there are drifts three and four feet deep in the driveway, and it’s impossible to tell what our local total might be. It should subside over night and be sunny on Sunday. The lector for 7:30am Mass called me to say she wouldn’t make it to church. I told her I wasn’t going at all myself—we’ll watch the shut-in Mass on TV Sunday morning. The paperboy called fishing for a snow shoveling gig, and we asked him to come on Sunday when the weather clears. He asked, "How much will you give me?" We said twenty dollars (we knew he had been asking $10-15 the day before, but now he knew how much work it was!). He seemed pleased and said he'd be over around 11am. You know we'll give him another five dollars just because he's a great kid.

The roads were closed to all but essential traffic, with the police telling everyone to just stay home. Two major malls closed, so you know it must be bad for retail commerce to grind to a halt. Of course the airport was closed—I am very glad I didn’t have to go anywhere this weekend.

We have heat, lights and the Internet. What could be better than that?

We have plenty of food and no reason to go out until Monday morning for work. We watched some episodes of “Northern Exposure” on dvd—just the thing for a snowbound afternoon.