Archive for December 2010
So Little Time
So much snow, so little time. Because I wasn’t able to finish my igloo on Sunday, I’m chomping at the bit to find a chance to get back at the project. Unfortunately, between the demands of the day job and the busy holiday events schedule, the opportunities for playing with igloo construction look to be few and far between. So, what happens on Monday? Snow, snow, and more snow.
I did sneak out of work a little early yesterday, but the free time which that was supposed to provide was consumed by the long, slow commute home in the storm, and then the hour of shoveling in the driveway. We had about 4 more inches on the ground when I got home and another inch was accumulating while I was shoveling.
I ended up spending extra time on the shoveling project because I needed to do some modifications to the piles lining both sides of the drive. It was time to climb up and push the tops back to flatten them out a bit. There’s always that chance it might snow again. Tomorrow is the first day of winter. I’m already having difficulty throwing the snow over the mountains growing on either side of the driveway.
Meanwhile, that half-built igloo waits just a short distance away, filled with a fresh new blanket of insulating snow. It would have been ideal to have finished building it before this dose of snow. The new snow cover would have looked a lot better over the domed roof of the structure than on the open floor.
Hmm. That reminds me of something…
Happy winter!
Building Another Igloo
Before starting
The day yesterday offered prime conditions for building an igloo and I just barely squeaked out enough time in the afternoon to get started on my first attempt of the year. It went pretty well for me, considering I worked alone for most of the time. This had its advantages, as well as disadvantages. I am prone to working rather slowly when by myself, which does nothing toward getting the project done in a timely fashion. But, alone, I am able to take as much time as I want to practice my technique of packing the dry snow into my ICEBOX frame. I must have learned something from my inaugural build last winter, as yesterday, out of the 2 full rows I accomplished, none of the blocks collapsed after removing the frame. Eventually, my next door neighbors, Matt and 3 of his daughters, arrived to assist. That allowed me to narrow my focus to just the packing step,
Beginning second row
as Matt and the girls provided an ongoing flow of perfectly prepared snow. By the time we were ready to quit, the sun had set and the temperature was dropping noticeably. That seemed to play nicely to my haste to reach a satisfying point for stopping, as the packed snow seemed to re-freeze in its new shape as fast as we finished filling it. Finding time to finish the rest of this project is a problem I have no solution for at this point. The calendar is kind of busy this time of year.
Starting up the ramp to row 2
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More Things I Don’t Get
I don’t get why people fail to respond to personal emails. I have begun a project where I conduct an interview of random members of my virtual community, Brainstorms, by email. Is it that they have supplied email addresses that they don’t actually use? Since I don’t regularly email them, have my queries ended up blocked by their spam filter? Is it a way to avoid saying, “No”? I have received 7 replies in the affirmative, 4 of whom have also actually then sent responses to my interview questions. Still waiting on the other three. I don’t know what to think about the complete silence from a few others.
I don’t get why Republican Senators filibustered and blocked a bill to provide 9/11 survivors and first responders with health care and compensation. Just to make that more irksome, the same politicians and their constituency had no hesitation to hastening the progress on assuring the extension of tax cuts for the wealthy.
I don’t get why drivers move into the left lane, but don’t drive faster than the rest of traffic. Why is it an annoyance to have someone drive faster than me? That’s another problem. When I am able to not give a hoot that drivers want to speed by in the left lane, I find myself wondering why other drivers allow a car to ride right on their bumper and don’t make an effort to move out of the way.
I don’t get why we allow the holidays to exacerbate the angst of family relationships. Why do we insist on gathering as families in a time of celebration, when families are fraught with conflict and animosity? Why haven’t we just figured it out and created traditions of gathering among the people who have no aversions toward each other?
I don’t get why I have so many ideas about things I don’t get until it comes time to write them down and then suddenly I can’t think of but a few of them.
Off Day
I’m going to take a day off from devising something new to present. In the space which that creates, I present a re-post from the past… One year ago today, this is what I came up with:
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Think
think about a reason not to think about
the things that for whatever silly reason
remain easier not to talk about
with the people who really matter most
as if the things that transpired
some time in the long ago past
deserve to hold sway
in a negative way
right now today
at the critical time of now
which matters more than any other
regardless how we allow
our silly trepidations
to carry so much weight
when things that did do harm
on a scale far beyond
our ability to comprehend
continue to come back around
and diminish each individual’s worth
for every time hurt befalls one other
all people of the world ultimately suffer
Originally posted 18 December, 2009
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Happy Saturday, 2010.
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Praising Sobriety
I love everything about abstinence from alcoholic beverages.
I love the freedom to choose be totally wild, crazy, and silly at (mostly) appropriate times with the equal ability to employ my maximum acuity in a moments notice.
I love partying in the company of my sober friends.
I love the absence of alcohol-induced melodrama.
I love that sobriety doesn’t have to be kept away from children.
I love that sobriety isn’t banned from the workplace.
I love that it isn’t against the law to drive sober.
I love that I don’t have the expense of purchasing alcohol.
I love that I never care whether alcohol is served at any event I attend.
I love that the absence of alcohol will never keep me from attending any event.
I love that not allowing myself the health benefits reportedly available from moderate consumption of alcohol has yet to cause me any ill effects.
I love that the practice of abstaining from alcoholic beverages is referred to as teetotalism, a movement that was first started in Preston, England in the early 19th century.
I love learning of notable others who are teetotalers, such as the voice of Homer Simpson, Dan Castellaneta, and the current Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden.
I love not needing to battle the dehydration caused by alcohol, especially since I have enough trouble maintaining optimal hydration sans the ethanol.
I love that my friends and family never need to question whether I am intoxicated, or not.
I love that my friends and family never need to worry about the possibility that I may drive drunk.
I love never needing to think about whether I have enough food in my stomach to slow the absorption of alcohol into my cells.
I love never having the urge to drink more than one glass of anything other than water when in social situations
I love having control over my speech and balance.
I love the absence of recovery facilities aimed at helping people overcome problems with their sobriety.
I love behaving with decency in the presence of law enforcement officials performing their duties to uphold the law.
I love being aware of how I behaved the night before.
I love that the beverages I drink allow me to maintain peaceful behavior, even if I drink too much. Granted, I may appear brusque in my urgency to reach the rest room.
I love everything about abstinence from alcoholic beverages.
More and more, I find I dearly love the company of others who choose abstinence, as well.
As It Is
Regardless the best laid schemes of mice and men, each moment passes away into a void that holds the essence of everything that transpires. Even as we examine the collective memories of everyone who has them, from every possible angle, the reality of what was, is morphing in an uncontrollable mix with what is. Stopping is not really an option, since a moment exists in conjunction with immediate moments on either side of it, before and after. It is actually too hard to contemplate, even as we live it, each and every second.
If something is too hard to think about, we have a very simple solution. We don’t bother thinking about it. We talk about the weather, or the local sports team. In my town, the talk is all about the local NFL franchise, The Minnesota Vikings, and their current melodrama that came about as a result of the weather. We’ve got a two-for-one going on here!
At the day-job yesterday, I learned that some people feel embarrassed by the national and even international attention being paid to the collapsing roof on the team’s sports stadium. One individual reported feeling forlorn that the situation reflects badly on the people here. We have a domed stadium to be able to play despite the weather, yet the weather has the better of us anyway, ripping a few gaping holes in the fabric cover. The hosts of evening television talk shows are making jokes about the situation in their monologues.
Another aspect of the story is that the football team isn’t enjoying much success this year, far under-performing the expectations that existed at the start of the season. It provides plenty of fodder for tying together the theme of the failing team and the failing stadium roof. They are made for each other.
It is the 50th year of existence for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. As we celebrate the star players who performed their magic for us over the years, it also catches our attention that we have repeatedly failed to accomplish the ultimate goal of winning a championship Superbowl trophy. Yesterday, one of the local columnists wrote about the top 5 flops in team history.
It occurred to me that if a person were to closely identify with the team that represents their home state, and that team became known for their repeated failings, it could imprint that person’s self-image. It hits close to home for me. I was star-struck by the athletes on that team when I was young. My moods swung up and down with their successes and failures. I have never confidently believed in ultimately succeeding at anything. I have an underlying sense that whatever it is, I will most likely see things end up in a flop.
It developed over a period of time at a young age. It is a hard thing to eventually unlearn. Over time, I have gained new insight to why other folks seem to have an uncanny ability to believe they will succeed, regardless the odds. Either they are not from around here, or they never paid any attention to local sports growing up.
Remembering
It wasn’t that long ago that the worst weather incident we were facing was the branches snapped off by the weight of an early, heavy, wet snow. How quickly things change. When more than a foot of new snow falls, and the temperatures plummet and wind chills get dangerously low, it seems a long time away from what it was like just a couple weeks before. Now we’ve got piles of snow that have frozen rock-hard, pushed high by snowplows and obstructing sight lines and traffic lanes. This is why people grow to loath winter. If you only interact with winter by way of an automobile, these things make it extremely aggravating.
Find a way to get out and play in the snow. It is the ultimate antidote for what ails the winter driver.
Remember when snow was fun? Charlie and Ryan and Elysa do…
Thoroughly Tested
Remember that table I was featuring some time ago, and how it was usually covered with something? Well, the current mess is a seasonal one. It shows up every year about this time and puts me to the ultimate test. It’s really pretty to look at.
But I don’t just look.
I’ve gotta contribute something to this operation! I’m the tester.
So far, so good.
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Making History
As I was standing in the driveway, up to my knees in the swirling snow, listening to the howling gusts of wind that evoked the sound effect of every recorded depiction of a storm I’ve ever heard, I tried to think when I have ever experienced this before in my life. How do you absorb the full depth of drama you are living in the moment that it happens, without knowing the reference the event will be measured against?
Well, for me, making sense out of things is complicated by my feeble memory. How does this compare to the Halloween blizzard of ’91? That one had a different kind of snow, and I don’t recall it being so windy. I don’t recall needing to move so much snow off of this driveway in the 20-plus years we have lived here, but in fairness, a while back we expanded the driveway by adding a parking pad to the side.
There have been times when one of the piles of snow to the side our driveway has gotten so tall that it is difficult to throw any more snow over it, but I don’t recall it being that way for the full length of both sides. It’s still December! Where will I put the snow next time we get a shovel-able amount?
One thing I was sure of, as I leaned on my shovel to rest in the darkness that had descended on my now 3 and 1/2 hour job, this was right up there with any other significant winter weather event. Once inside again, my intuition proved adept as national news sources began to take notice. It didn’t hurt to get a little extra press from the NFL as our storm initially just foiled the attempts of the visiting team from New York to land here due to the airport closure, forcing them to spend the night in Kansas City. Eventually, the game was moved out a day, and then the roof of our sports stadium collapsed, putting the plans for the game in question entirely.
After the fact, taken as a whole, with accumulated snow totals, actual temperature and wind gust readings, and the collection of events impacted by the storm factored in, that moment I was experiencing was historic, indeed.
Relative Something 