Thursday, February 15, 2007

Survivor: Indiana

This week has been a complete white-out. Well ok...thats not totally true but its close. We experienced the panic of the century with the onslaught of Old Man Winter. Oh was he ever grumpy and kept yelling. I swear I even heard him state, "Get off my lawn you damn kids" but I could be mistaken. Sounded though like it came from the south in the area of my immediate neighbors. Who knows...it was wild and crazy outside.

We received 8 inches or so of snow, sleet and freezing rain. Couple that with blustery winds and it was down right cold. It was so cold...it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Ok Ok...for you perv minded people, read this first. This saying has roots in fact in India. The "Monkey" or brass plate to hold cannon balls was used in some on the barracks that were in colder parts of the continent, When the temperature dropped, the contracting metals would cause the pile to fall. On war ships the cannon balls were of iron and the plate they were stacked on beside the cannon was made of brass, the plate was known as a monkey. In extreme cold the two metals would contract differently and the iron balls would fall off the monkey. Satisfied?

Since I cannot shovel snow, this snowfall was rather tough on ole Dazd's ego. I sooooo wanted to shovel snow and make sure the family had adequate means for travel without encountering avalanches. It's always been my job and one I took pride in performing. But this year it was merely impossible to shovel let alone sweep off the porch. I must say the missus did a very nice job of making sure we had an adequate path. Lil Dazd even helped too...and with some supervision from dad, I think he'll follow his dad's footsteps in snow removal. So I've been assigned porch duty and handed my very own official snow removal broom along with a bag of salt. The only instructions I received about the salt were pretty simple. "For God's sake...do not, I repeat DO NOT make sure the ice pellets are evenly distributed for the entire length of the sidewalk. Leave the engineering logic at work, please!"

Ok...so I take my job seriously.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ohhh loved the history lesson! Very cool!

Anonymous said...

I know exactly how you feel. I've had to deal with my diminished capacity during these same conditions & darn if I'm not working overtime on keeping my ego in check! I know its NOT Easy but I'm glad your cooperating.

michele
lettersfromnyc.mu.nu

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