Snow Is a Four Letter Word

I felt sort of unclean claiming yesterday as a snow day-I'm already on vacation so I'm not skipping out from work or anything, and I did get up early because Sunday evening's forecasts had led me to believe that the overnight snowfalls across New England were to be horrendous.

I'd gone out late Sunday afternoon/early Sunday evening (thank goodness we've already had the shortest day of the year, eh?) and moved about four inches of snow. Yes, the wind was howling and the snow was falling horizontally but local TV weather forecasters and the Weather dot com brigade had calmly assured me that the worst was yet to come.

Around these parts when a storm is abrewin' we head to the local market and stock up on bread, milk and toilet paper. I'm not sure why, but trust me on this, we do it and we do it better than anyone anywhere has ever done anything like this before. Nowhere else in the universe has the connection from Charmin' to Armageddon Now (or even a little later) been made with the certainty that we have. Seriously, who among us wants to answer 'Nope' to the Got Milk question? That's what I'm talking about.

Anyway, we didn't really have anywhere near the snow we were threatened to receive-I'm NOT complaining and certainly NOT boasting, just stating a fact. My cross-town friend, Jerry, dug himself out and, as a Christmas present, cleared two of his neighbors walkways as well. As random acts of kindness go, a pretty fine one, I think.

I used our snowblower to push back out into the street the snow at the foot of our right of way that the city plows had pushed into it, so that as I was finishing up, the plow could come back down the street and push it all back in again. The circle of life, I suppose.

I had enough time lounging around the house to work my cross country ski machine exerciser in the basement for an hour-okay not as exciting as the cross country skiing Grosse Patrick in DC talks about this time of year, but cardio is cardio though some people like the downhill stuff. I smiled watching ESPN as talk turned to the for-Tuesday rescheduled pro football game that Sunday's weather postponement created.

All the chitter and chatter about pro football players, or any professional athletes, as 'warriors' makes me want to throw up in my own mouth but this time I also felt sorry for how we ignored the fans who enable all of this goofiness by shelling out hundreds per ticket (plus who knows what for a 'seat license' whatever that is) while these guys have at it. Lots of folks I suspect who thought they were going to a Sunday afternoon football game, going home and getting up for work yesterday morning won't be able to go to a live game tonight, but thanks for the money.

I spent more than a minute thinking about the hundred plus thousand actual warriors, men and women in uniform and those supporting them, we currently have in Afghanistan whose service makes possible my, and permit me to speak for a moment for you as well when I say, our mewling and puking about bad weather, slick roads and cancelled professional sporting events. And let me repeat my observation from the other day in a different venue: for those who found a Flexible Flier under the tree on Christmas morning and were hoping for enough snow to try it out, I have something for you, vier beruehmten buchstaben. Genau!

-bill kenny