Standing On Boxes

I spent Saturday morning digging out the rest of the driveway. It took longer than I had thought it would. More snow, it was heavier, and I’m more out of shape than I thought. Actual shoveling time ? Approximately 2 hours broken up in 30 minute chunks with 20 minute breaks in between. I’m still sore a day later…

Anyway… I was getting to the end of my driveway, the hardest part. Where it gets packed down by the snow plows thick enough to build a house out of. I had just taken a break and had just started tackling this last bit when a miracle occurred. For the second time since I’ve lived in that house one of the local people who spend their winters plowing driveways for others saw me and offered to take care of that last bit. In 4 minutes he completely cleared away the snow in front of my driveway…. saving me at least an hour of work…..

I’m not sure how you thank someone for something like that. It might not seem like such a big deal… But it does restore faith in humanity.

I’ll occasionally do something just for fun.

• I signed up with classmates.com way back when before they started charging for everything. No desire to pay at this point. It was amusing at the time. But I don’t really see the point in paying for something like that. The few people from High School I still keep in contact with, 20 years later, I don’t need that to talk to.
• I occasionally buy a lottery ticket, even though chances of winning are non-existent. I wait a couple weeks after the drawing and check to see how many numbers I get right. No more than 3 so far since I started doing it.

• A month ago I signed up with matches.com, one of those “meet your soulmate” websites but didn’t feel like paying and just did the free listing part. So… once every couple days.. the computer that manages that list sends me a message with 10 people who, in theory, match my “search criteria”. About all that seems to match is age-range (28-37) and location (somewhere within 100 miles).
  It’s a strange way to meet people….

  I’m sure I don’t meet anyone else’s criteria very well.. either.
  And I’m not sure I really want to. I was just curious (and bored and possibly tired of talking to myself that day) But, if I was even interested, I would have to pay to be able to send any of them a message. Someone out there must pay or they couldn’t keep running.

It snowed the evening of the 25th. Around here, jammed between the NH WHite Mountains and NH Lakes region, eight inches of snow fell. Points south and southeast saw a bit more but that’s ok. It’s the snow in my driveway that is keeping me busy. During a few spare moments of my day I’ll go outside and tackle another section of snow. Hopefully I’ll have it all cleared out by Monday so I can go to the post office and get some stamps.

Fortunately, I work out of my home, and except for the post office I don’t need to go anywhere for the next couple days. Now if only I can put all that time to good use and get my current needs to be done yesterday work project done on time. Progress seems to go in spurts on this particular project. The past couple of days were low productivity-wise but the next week has to be fairly high. I hope. Or it won’t get done on time.

Saturday morning will be a few hours of snow shoveling, some errands if I finish enough of the driveway to get out (It’s over 100 feet x 6 foot wide x 8 inches deep of medium weight snow), vege for part of the afternoon, spend a couple hours getting back into “project mode” and spend Sunday catching up on what I didn’t get done Thursday & Friday so on Monday I’ll be back on track.

Why hasn’t anyone turned James Schmitz’ Witches of Karres into a movie? Or did George Lucas buy up the movie rights so no one notices how close his idea of the Force matches the klatha energy Schmitz’ witches use 10 years before the idea shows up in Star Wars.

Or is it that no one could figure out how to do this with live actors. Someone give Hayao Miyazaki a call! Before Disney finds out !

My iBook is starting to make chirping noises. I think. Or a cricket has gotten into the house out of the sub-zero weather…. and joined the mice that seem to have decided to take up residence in the kitchen….

As the saying goes… brrr….. welcome to winter.

Why don’t I write long, insightful missives in my blog like lots of other people do ? Maybe it’s a medium issue ? I seem to do best when the audience is small…

Looking at e-mail… I must write several hundred words a day on assorted topics… but most of them are work related and don’t belong here. Too bad I can’t just dump e-mail to blog…. someone must have a tool that makes it easy…

Where’s that silver bullet when you need it ? Apparently not around here… I guess I just like writing to people I know.

Just some minor notes….

• The buggy picked up a stone during the Thanksgiving break. An 8 inch vertical/wavy crack right under the left windshield wiper. I’m checking prices but since I’ve got a $250 deductible and the first quote was for $250….
• Cold out…… you wouldn’t know it was only the first week of December here in NH.