8:30 a.m.
The temperature outside is 18.7F. By my measurements, we’ve got exactly one foot of fresh snow on the back porch since I shoveled it off last night at around 5:15 p.m. On the front porch, we have well over a foot. And it’s still coming down – we’re close to a band that could be dumping as much as four inches every half hour! Insanity! Becky is making cran-apple pancakes for breakfast, and then later we’re going to venture out to see more of the snow. For now, we have some photos shot from ***inside the building|http://gallery.prwdot.org/blizzard_200501***:

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Well over a foot of snow on the front porch!|ppp

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Outside on the back porch and a view of the Home Style Laundry parking lot.|ppp

10:00 a.m.
Outside temperature is 18.5F. Becky and I just got back inside from a little jaunt around the block. We cleared pretty much all of the snow off of our front porch. It wasn’t too difficult because the snow is very light and fluffy. Then Becky tried out her cross-country skis. The conditions weren’t quite right, because the snow was just too cold and not slick enough for her to glide. But we went around the block just the same. We entered the building via the Home Style Laundry parking lot, and had to climb over/through a massive drift of snow left by the laundry’s snowplow. I was sinking in nearly to my waist! The ***gallery|http://gallery.prwdot.org/blizzard_200501*** is updated with more pics.

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Becky shovels off the front porch.|ppp

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Becky parks on the side of Cabot Street, in front of the laundry’s parking lot.|ppp

11 a.m.
We’re watching ***Return of the King|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/***, the extended edition, including the drinking contest between Gimli and Legolas. 🙂 The snow’s piled up on top of our basement windows, so we can’t see what exactly is going on outside, but it sounded like someone has come to plow our parking lot. We talked to ***Corey|http://corey.prwdot.org/*** online. He came back from ***Sunday River|http://www.sundayriver.com/*** last night and is venturing out this morning to the local Arlington ***Dunkin Donuts|http://www.dunkindonuts.com/***. (Update: He just got back. They were closed. 🙁 ) We talked to Becky’s dad on the phone. He and Dianne are in Baltimore, coming back from a trip to Florida. Sounds like they’ll be staying there over night since the Boston area airports are closed.

Snippet from movie watching. Gandalf: “We have just passed into the realm of Gondor!” Becky, to the movie: “How can you tell? Did the roads get worse?” “Is it like when you are driving back from New Hampshire into Massachusetts?”

4:00 p.m.
We finished watching Return of the King, and shortly thereafter we heard the sound of a plow outside! One of our landlord’s sons was out plowing the lot with a Bobcat. We went outside and helped shovel out snow from around the cars, as much as possible so that we can get our cars out if necessary. The snow has pretty much stopped, but from what we hear, most of Beverly’s side roads are not passable… including ours. So we’ll be holed up here for the foreseeable future!

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Here’s what our living room windows look like from outside|ppp

6:46 pm
Becky’s Turn to Update!
We just got back from a nice drive around town. The roads weren’t too awful… The main streets had been plowed, but there was still a layer of snow on the ground. Hopefully the sand/salt trucks will be out soon.

The good news is… I only had to hop out of the car and push once!

Area Bloggers
Other area folk update on the snow: ***Arthur|http://kizoku.blogspot.com/2005/01/for-those-keeping-score.htmlhttp://kizoku.blogspot.com/2005/01/for-those-keeping-score.html***, ***James|http://drjames.blogspot.com/2005/01/whitewashed.html*** (both in Beverly), ***Chris|http://amusings.journalspace.com/*** (in Groveland), ***Jeremy and Angela|http://thebiggspicture.org/2005/01/blizzard-of-05.html*** (in Hyannis), ***Nikkiana|http://everytomorrow.org/archives/2005/01/23/randomess/*** (near Concord, NH).

When I got up this morning at 7:30, the temperature on our outside thermometer read -4.0F. At 8:30, it’s reading +2.7F. That’s without wind chill factored in, of course. Inside, it’s a little over +60F, which feels quite chilly. Our hot water baseboard heat doesn’t work all that well when it gets really cold outside, which is a sad irony. We have to get our landlord to send someone over to bleed the excess air out of the system when it gets like this. We can’t do it ourselves because that part is in a locked closet. *sigh*

We were just watching the ***NECN|http://www.boston.com/news/necn/*** forecast, and they showed a snow forecast map for tonight – Beverly is in the colored band that is forecast to get 24+ inches of snow! It’s almost as much as last year’s ***nor’easter|http://prwdot.org/archives/001506.html***. We’ll keep you posted on how it turns out. 🙂 Hopefully we won’t be getting any ***WIDESPREAD UNPLOWABLE GIANT BLOCKS OF GRANITE|http://www.boston-online.com/common/004451.html*** …

Update At Noon
As of noon, the outside temperature has reached 14.7 degrees. Light flakes of snow have started to fall in Beverly. Found this post here, getting into online gaming.

Update At 2:30 PM
The outside temperature is 16 degrees. There is still some light snow falling, but this is just ‘ocean effect’ snow, and not part of the actual impending storm. The National Weather Service has issued a ***blizzard warning|http://www.crh.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/showsigwx.php?warnzone=MAZ007&warncounty=MAC009&local_place1=Beverly&product1=BLIZZARD+WARNING*** for most of eastern Mass, in effect from 5 p.m. today to 6 p.m. tomorrow. Here’s what we can expect in Beverly, according to the NWS:

qqq|THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM WILL OCCUR TONIGHT AND MUCH OF SUNDAY MORNING. SNOW WILL LIKELY FALL AT THE RATE OF 3 INCHES PER HOUR FOR SEVERAL HOURS OVERNIGHT. … ALONG THE COAST…WIND GUSTS BETWEEN 60 AND 70 MPH ARE EXPECTED LATE TONIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. … THE WINDS LIKELY WILL ALSO TRIGGER SCATTERED POWER OUTAGES NEAR THE COAST…AND TO A LESSER EXTENT INLAND. THE SNOW WILL LIKELY BE OF A SOMEWHAT WETTER CONSISTENCY…AND THUS CREATE THE RISK FOR EVEN MORE WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES. … IN ADDITION…THE COLD TEMPERATURES AND STRONG WINDS WILL CAUSE WIND CHILLS BETWEEN 10 AND 20 BELOW LATE TONIGHT. THIS WILL ADD TO THE DANGER FOR ANY ONE WHO VENTURES OUTDOORS TONIGHT. … TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE ON THE ORDER OF 20 TO 30 INCHES…WITH
AMOUNTS AS HIGH AS 3 FEET POSSIBLE.|qqq

There’s just something about the NWS writing their warnings in ALL CAPS that makes it seem just that much more dramatic. We have plans to go out to dinner and a movie with some friends tonight, and at the moment I don’t think we’ll be calling it off. After all, we’re supposed to be hardy New Englanders – what’s a few feet of snow between friends?

Update at 9:30 PM
The temperature outside is 23.5F. There are 3.5 inches of fresh snow on our back door step, and I had shoveled away about 2.0 inches previously today, so that’s about 5.5 inches total thus far. The snow is supposed to continue late into the day tomorrow. Here’s an update from the NWS:

qqq|Amounts as high as 3 feet possible. The most vulnerable locations
for 30 inches or more of snow are Essex… Plymouth… Norfolk and
Barnstable counties in Massachusetts and Providence County in Rhode
Island.|qqq

Essex County – that’s us! Our friends chickened out and didn’t want to drive all the way to Danvers to see a movie, so instead we all watched ***Spy Game|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0266987/*** on DVD here and had dinner at ***Siam Delight|http://www.nvo.com/siamdelight***. It’s all good.

**note** This post is dedicated to Kristina Wilson. And if she ever reads this blog entry she’ll know exactly why!**

There is a man who rides the same train in to Boston that I do. Frequently he wears a pair of bright red Converse All*Star sneakers. I’ve noticed them because of their redness, the fact that I love wearing my Converse sneaks, and because they are a sharp contrast to his otherwise “corporate casual” attire. He seems pretty comfortable with looking a bit different.

Today, I was in for a shock as I noticed that on his left foot he was wearing his usual red sneaker and on his right foot…an identical sneaker, only in BRIGHT BLUE!

This has led me to wonder, “Did he do that on purpose?” Well, his feet did look very patriotic, so it could have been a concious choice. Or, “Did he put his shoes on in the dark?” A logical answer to the mis-matched shoe phenomena.

As neither shoe particularly “coordinated” wtih his outfit, I am led to believe that either choice above could be considered the ‘right’ choice. This will probably continue to baffle me until something more interesting comes along 🙂

Sunday was the first really big snow storm of this winter season. We got about 10 inches of snow here in the Beverly area. Still nothing compared to last year’s ***Nor’easter|http://gallery.prwdot.org/noreaster***, but ***good nonetheless|http://gallery.prwdot.org/first_big_snow_2004***.

Check out this huge fleet of snow plows lined up on the Forest Street bridge over Route 128:

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Rarin’ to go!

While at the Y on Tuesday I met a young man who is a freshman(fresh-person?) at Gordon College. (Go Scots!) We were having a nice conversation about the campus and professors and what-not and at one point I mentioned that I lived in Sheppard Hall.

The blank stare from the Gordon newbie was the shattering of my young innocence. I quickly realized that he had never seen Sheppard Hall. Had never made a Nunnery or Virgen Vault joke. Had never met any of the fun loving, quiet, studious, wild gals that resided there over the years. What a shame. What a loss.

I refrained from mentioning “Old Lane” or “Prince Chapel”. I didn’t want to sound like some old fogie or something!

Here’s to you, ***dear Sheppard|http://gordon.edu/about_gordon/buildings_tour/images/shepard.jpg***. You will be missed!

When I got to work this morning I realized that I needed change for the resgister. So I bundled up and walked two buildings away to the bank. Often there is a line at this branch of what once was a green bank and now is a red one. Today, as I walked in, there was none.

“Horay,” thought I as I zipped to the front of the line. There were two customers being helped at the counter and I was ready for a quick exit. I grabbed a lollypop from the basket. I opened it. I enjoyed it’s faux-orange flavor. I did not bite it.

I continued licking my lollypop for another 10-12 minutes, standing there…the only person in line. The customers ahead of me had finished and left and both the tellers were doing anything but call me up to their windows.

It is sad when you stand in line at the bank long enough to finish an entire lollypop!

There wasn’t quite so much snow on my car today…

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…as there was one year ago today…

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Yes, today is the anniversary of last year’s fantastically huge ***Nor’easter|http://gallery.prwdot.org/noreaster***. We got a light dusting at most, but sadly nothing more than that is in the forecast for the next week or so. We only have the ***photos from last year|http://gallery.prwdot.org/noreaster*** to dream of. Here’s hoping for a white Christmas!

Apartment tenants in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, gifted with free water usage by their landlords, leave their sinks running, their bathtubs overflowing, and flush gallons of water down the toilet every day, is always needed to contact a plumbing contractor. Those days might soon be numbered. Today on my favorite news radio station, ***WBZ 1030|http://www.wbz1030.com/***, I heard that the Massachusetts House of Representatives had passed ***H5001|http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/house/ht05001.htm***. H5001 is a bill, backed by environmental lobbyists and landlords, that proposes to amend Mass General Law to allow landlords to submeter their tenants water usage and to bill them for said usage. The bill is aimed squarely at the previously-mentioned water-wasting tenants.
Continue reading →

Tonight, after we finished dinner at the Salem Taco Bell, we pulled out of the shopping plaza parking lot as usual, in the right hand turn lane. We merged onto Highland Avenue, which at that point is a four-lane divided highway, and traveled in the right-hand lane. Just a few hundred feet later, a black sedan pulled out of a driveway to the right, and swerved right into our path. Here are five scenarios as to what might have happened next:

What Really Happened
I hit the brakes, bringing our car to a stop and allowing the sedan to safely merge onto the road.

The Correct Boston Driver Scenario
I swerved quickly into the left-hand lane to avoid the sedan. I did not use my turn signal, and I did not check behind me to see if any traffic was coming up in the left-hand lane. I narrowly avoided disaster, missing the car coming behind me in the left lane by inches. He honked his horn. I honked my horn. The guy in the black sedan honked his horn too. Some guy a few blocks away heard it and started honking his horn.

The James Bond Scenario
I flipped a toggle switch on my dashboard, deploying both the port and starboard missles hidden underneath my car. I then pressed a button on my steering wheel to fire both of the missiles directly at the sedan. The sedan exploded in a ball of fire, and I hit the accelerator to zoom right through it. I then pulled a 180-degree turn, deployed the machine guns, and gunned down all of the cars behind me – just for good measure. Also, my car was a brand-new BMW roadster.

The Future World Scenario
I pulled up on the yoke of my flying car, skimming quickly over the other car, wishing that my car really could made that cool, zippy sound that The Jetsons had me hoping for.

The Absolutely Crazy, Never Going To Happen, Not In A Million Years, Fantasy Scenario
The situation was avoided entirely because the driver of the black sedan actually stopped, looked at the road, realized a car was coming, and decided not to pull out into traffic!