Standard Mischief

Although we’ve had a bitter cold snap, winter has been lax on the slick stuff this year until a few days ago. That’s changed now because we got an inch of snow that sticked and then a glazing of freezing rain last night.

All you readers from the hearty north can feel free to puff out your chest and say “An inch!? That’s nothing!”,  and normally I’d agree, but here in the DC metro area we have more than our fair share of idiots from elsewhere (government staffers, diplomats from warm semi-tropical nations across the sea, and so on), who’ve never seen the stuff before and are out there on the roads being a hazard to themselves and others.

Mix that in with the now frozen rain and you have a recipe for disaster. Barring the illegal-in-this-area studded tires, chains, or sand, you’re just not going anywhere on ice unless it’s flat. That is, in fact, why I’m up early. Some idiot with all-wheel drive desperately wants to get back up the hill he just slid down, and he apparently doesn’t mind revving his engine and spinning tires loudly.

photo of bread, TP, and powdered milk.

I’ve been pre-prepared since Katrina, and here you see the stereotyped basics. Everything is shelf stable except the bread, which freezes nicely. I don’t normally drink milk, but it comes in handy if I need to cook something (no measuring, just three heaping spoonfuls for every cup needed and add water instead).

My good-intentioned neighbors, (who, every week in the summer, I mow their 5 foot by 4 foot yard for them), decided to do me the “favor” of shoveling my driveway. That’s nice, but the frozen rain is now sticking to my pavement instead of that inch of snow. I guess I’ll have to melt the ice off now as a shovel will get me nowhere.

I guess I’ll be telecommuting this morning. It wasn’t even that bad on the toll-road last night (before the ice came) and there was some idiot that lost control in his SUV, spun out, crossed four lanes of traffic and slammed into the jersey barrier on the left-hand shoulder, facing the wrong way. I’d like to avoid people like this if at all possible.