It only took me two and a half hours and the minimal help of a bobcat to shovel our two cars out this afternoon. I’d say that isn’t too bad.

I have come to believe that shoveling snow (done correctly with your legs, not your back) is the ultimate and perfect form of exercise. It is aerobic, forcing your heart rate up. It is muscle conditioning, arms, legs and back, and best of all you gain a sense of purpose and a feeling of accomplishment as you start to see your car and the pavement again. I think that that is tons better than going to the gym and running for 30 minutes and getting nowhere 🙂

Speaking of shoveling… For all of you who have heard the saga of the shovel that walked away from outside our apartment door and thought never to been seen again… THE SHOVEL HAS BEEN FOUND!!! It had been seceretly locked away in the closet with the water heaters and the cable hook ups. I was able to sucker the keys away from Landlord Jr. while he was playing with the bobcat and there it was, all red and lonely. We are glad to have you home again, shovel!

So not only was it a Nor’easter today, but we also had a blackout, from around 8:30 to 10:30 p.m.! Becky and I ventured out into the darkened city of Beverly to have a look-see, and if you jump to ***page two of our Nor’easter gallery|http://gallery.prwdot.org/noreaster?page=2***, you can see what there was to see! It was way cool walking around outside… it was so windy and stormy. Cabot Street was fairly dead, but there were a lot of people in cars trying to make their way down Rantoul Street… and having a fairly difficult time of it. The news tonight said that 13,000 North Shore Mass Electric subscribers were without power, and I know that Beverly has over 30,000 residents, so I’m guessing it was mostly us, and probably a few other communities too. It was fun for us while it lasted, but I hope nobody had any serious problems. At least the outages and the snowstorm are happening on the weekend…. the impact isn’t as much as it would be on a weekday.

In weather news, the snow still continues… our pastor called on the phone and let us know that church is cancelled for tomorrow. We also have a party we were scheduled to attend in the afternoon, but we will need to see what the driving is like tomorrow before we make that venture.

That’s all for now… more later from the Nor’east. 🙂

Today was the much-anticipated first big snowstorm of the season, a proper Nor’easter. Becky and I took a walk down to the ocean today, and I ***took some photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/noreaster***.

I also shot a ***short video|http://prwdot.org/mov/ocean_snow.avi*** at the beach – it’s 11.7 megs and in AVI format, so I’d only try watching it if you’re on a fairly quick connection. The waves and the sound of the surf are awesome during a storm like this!