💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2023 › 12-09.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:39:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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We knew there was some snow coming - not a huge shock here, in winter, but it's been a strange one, jumping between cold and warm (well, above freezing), so that we haven't actually had much snow on the ground. But when my partner was driving home from work yesterday, she said it was starting to get a bit dicey. I went out for groceries a couple hours later, when the online buzz around Shohei Ohtani maybe flying to Toronto turned out to be an elaborate mistake/hallucination. The wipers were going like crazy. The snow was starting to stick around on the ground, and it was wet. Wonderful.
I got home, unpacked everything, made some tea for us, and we spent the next few hours just relaxing. This morning, though - oof. Not a huge amount of snow by height, but a couple of inches of wet, slushy snow, with a layer of ice at the bottom. I made some breakfast, took a couple of robaxicet for my back, then went outside to get at it. I could see my neighbours across the street out there too, all of us slowly moving the heavy, slushy mess. Then a huge front-end loader with an attached snowblower came down the street, and in about five minutes, made short work of my next door neighbour's driveway.
I've looked into snow removal; it's really expensive, more than a thousand dollars a winter. Admittedly, I live in a more affluent neighbourhood; my neighbours aren't the only ones who pay to not deal with shovelling. But they also pay for complete yard care during the summer (fertilizing, mowing, weeding), grocery delivery, weekly maid service, mobile dry-cleaning. Dry cleaning? We have no idea what they do, but they have money to throw around. The dry cleaning has pushed our guesses toward "lawyers".
Now I'm inside, simultaneously sweaty and cold, sipping a strong cup of coffee while I work on one of my software projects. And this, I guess. Today we've decided to stay in, my partner with some baking to do, and me with, well, whatever. A half hour of heavy snow and my arms are tired. I'm working on a user's suggestion on one of my Discords. Writing here. We're done a month, ish, of winter. At least four to go.