Thursday, January 27, 2011

Sad Anniversary

Judy McCormick
Today is the sad anniversary of the unexpected passing of my favorite mother-in-law, Judy McCormick. Oh, how we miss you Judy! I learned a weird thing recently: the numbers that Judy played for the lottery were 1027 (which is sort of like 1-27, the day she died). When I play, I let the computers pick the numbers.

Can you believe it? More Snow!

I'm at home again today (Thursday) because we had another snow storm. We may be setting a record. Actually, we had a "small" storm yesterday - snowed most of the day and we got a couple inches. Then last night a big storm blew through and I woke up to about 2 feet of snow (see picture above).

When I went out to clean off my car this morning, this (above) is the view that greeted me. Fortunately, it was not icey cold but rather in low 30s and no wind. At this point, our lot had not been plowed.

Here is a picture of what my Ford Escape looked like before I cleaned it off. Note that the snow is up to the bumper and about the middle of the wheels. Also note how much snow is on the front wind shield. You can get an idea of the depth of snow from the picture below that shows a partially clean wind shield.
I spent about 2 hours shoveling a path along the side of my car and cleaning off the snow from the top.  I went inside for a bit when the plow arrived.
After about an hour, I went back out because everyone was moving cars so the plow could clean the lot. I find it quite heartening that so many of us were working together. I enjoyed chatting with my neighbors. I learned that one of my neighbors got sick earlier and the ambulance got stuck in the snow at the front of the building! I ended up staying out for another 2+ hours shoveling around cars and scraping up the melting ice from by the back door and the mouth of the driveway. Snow shoveling - the poor man's fitness club.

As I write this, the crew has returned to finish cleaning the lot with a front end loader.

Note that there are a couple of cars that are virtually buried. There is not a lot of room to put the snow.
The forecast is calling for more snow tomorrow afternoon and Saturday afternoon. Then, we might get another storm next Wednesday to help celebrate Ground Hog Day.

At War!


I've started the 3rd book of Richard J. Evans's triology on the history of the Third Reich. It starts with the Germans invading Poland in 1939. What was done to the Poles and the Jews is horrifying! While it's shocking to read about this treatment, people should not think that this was an abberation, never to occur again. The scarey aspect is that it might not take as much as you think for us to get to a similar mindset.  That is why it is important to know history-so we don't end up going down a similar road.