Learning to Cope With Weather in the Northeast

The wintry tundra storm has missed my part of NJ for the most part. There hasn't been much snow accumulation at all, but we do have a thick shell of ice on top of everything. Last night I was walking the trash to the dumpster, and it literally felt like I was walking on eggshells. And this morning it was sleeting and blowing against my bedroom windows. I woke up, and it sounded oddly like I was in an aquarium.

Its always a weird way to start the day when you wake up without your glasses on thinking you're in an aquarium.

I understand Kentucky is getting a lot of rain? That's nasty.

Allentown, Pennsylvania got a lot of ice, too, and very little snow. This is only relevant to me because I'm flying out of there on Friday. Correction: I'm supposed to be flying out of there on Friday morning. Right now all of their Wednesday flights are canceled, but Thursday and Friday flights look unaffected.

I have a plan, though, if my flight gets canceled and I can't make it to Florida for my birthday.

The snow plows that scrape the apartment complex's parking lot always push the snow to one end of the lot. All of the kids that live in the complex climb this huge snow hill and sled down it. I was looking at it last night after thinking how much more fun it would be if the kids didn't have to slip and fall every time they tried to climb it. So if I'm stuck in New Jersey on Saturday, I'm going to take some tools and carve steps into the snow/ice so the kids can climb it easier. Then I will spend the rest of the day drinking and listening to the laughter.

Another obnoxious thing about the weather and my job.

On a regular day of sales calls, I never have to be on the road before 10. And if the weather's bad, that is an impetus for me to hit the road even later, because usually the bad weather clears as the morning changes into afternoon. If its icy or snowy, by noon the roads are all clear and drivers aren't puttering around quite as slow.

But for anyone with a job that requires them to be in by 8 or 9, its a different story. Because there's snow/ice/snice on their cars, they get up even earlier in the event of bad weather so they can scrape their cars, shovel their steps, and cause lots of noise. And because they're in New Jersey, and the thing to do here is not have an inside voice, the people yell from their cars to their children or their partners.

"BEN! GET IN THE CAR! THE CAR IS WARM! I SCRAPED THE WINDHSIELD! HURRY UP!"

So what should mean extra sleep time for Paul actually means earlier wake up time, usually to a sound that wakes me out of a dream and sends me into a weird panic. "What's that grinding sound?! Why are people yelling?! Where am I?! Why can't I see?!"

The answers are: shoveling/scraping, people don't have inside voices, New Jersey, I'm not wearing my glasses.

The bonerface that plows my apartment complex's parking lot did this to my car last week: