Yes, folks: Snow. Removal is the order of the day. Following is a random pic taken somewhere somewhen by someone else, posted here in commemoration of this day:



"I iz teh pollr bare. Rawr."

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Not here...yet. I do not look forward to that day.

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I seem to have a mild to moderate case of WhOAD!

Got a biddable dog?

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I wore a long-sleeved shirt the other day. It doesn't appear as though I will again for at least a week. I did my time in the land of long winters and settled (just) south of the Mason-Dixon line for a reason.

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Charlie
Whorfin Woods
One cat short of crazy.

No snow yet - just rain!

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Keith.
Trying to do justice to my various musical instruments.

I like cold weather and snow. I wish we had it here!

Oh, no. My dog could fit on a snow shovel blade!


There's no shortage of either in my neck of the woods.

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I seem to have a mild to moderate case of WhOAD!

I confess I have had similar thoughts, but for some reason they don't stick. As a dyed-in-the-wool townie with a love of historic surroundings, Savannah has always beckoned me. But then there are those pesky hurricanes. The Ozarks have always been a draw, too. Never been to either one, but they look darned good.

I think we had around 7 inches of snowfall - and I believe that set a new and surprising record for first snowfall volume - but it's already up to 36F (that's 2.22222C to you Centigradiacs ), so between the shoveling and residual ground heat, now only the lawns are still covered in white. Still, it's unseasonably cold; normally the temps should be around 20 degrees F warmer (at around 13C, say), and it doesn't look as if that's going to change soon. But I don't have to really bundle up yet, so I'm fine with it.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I am dreading winter, as every year. Yes, I would love to move somewhere warm (I wish I still lived in Bangkok)... unfortunately, I still have one remaining aging parent and do not want to have to try to move back when the aging gets to the point that he needs me (obviously it's not unfortunate that I have him, simply that I'm sure he'll need me some day so it restricts me from moving).

At any rate, I'm sure the sticker shock of the cost of living somewhere warmer would kill me anyway...

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Here's tae us--
Wha's like us?
Damn few--
And they're a' deid--
Mair's the pity.

From what I understand, it depends more on urbanization, and even that's not a consistent measure. IIRC, day-to-day life in NOLA would be noticeably cheaper for me than it is in MPLS; smaller towns in the South, just as as in the North, would probably seem like a dream to my wallet. In MN only clothing, groceries, and prescription/OTC drugs are tax-exempt (and I am grateful for that); otherwise MPLS in particular taxes the crap out of everything. If they could find a way to tax the air, they would've done it by now. And eventually, this drives up costs. But with that comes a decent infrastructure - more or less. Let's just say that there's palpable evidence of a certain amount of unequal prioritization.

Whenever my sister would visit from suburban upstate New York, she'd gush about our roads. I was a bit surprised; I mean, New York's a highly taxed state, right? How is it that its suburbs, at least, aren't reaping the benefits? But she said that going through 5 tires per year wasn't thought all that unusual there. I guess I'll take the polar vortex.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I'm sure California would have figured out how to tax the air well before Minnesota, or any other jurisdiction, did. (Though, oddly enough, gas stations are forbidden to charge fuel purchasers for use of their air.) Quite frankly, there is only one thing I miss about California that I can't find elsewhere.

Here in Michigan, we have some really bad roads. There may even be residents of third-world countries who would complain about them.

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I seem to have a mild to moderate case of WhOAD!

I'm not a small-town person, so that wouldn't work for me to move on the cheap. (After all, I loved Bangkok, so... then again, in Thailand it was easier to get out of the city if you wanted to since there were buses, minibuses, cheap trains, you could even hire a taxi to drive you a few hours out of the city if you really wanted to and you wouldn't have to sell your firstborn to do it the way you almost have to in the U.S. to even go across town, and a lot of Meetup groups with which you could get away and go hiking and such.)

Roads are... challenging. Where I live, the roads definitely suck. I've not really driven on roads in other states, so I don't know if they're unusually bad here like some people say, or if roads are going to suck everywhere you have cold and snow and salt. Dan, have you experience elsewhere? I've heard people say our roads are the most terrible, and people say that's just what you get in cold states and other ones are similar.

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Here's tae us--
Wha's like us?
Damn few--
And they're a' deid--
Mair's the pity.

Yes indeed I do. My military service brought me to Illinois and Virginia, and I'm originally from California. Illinois roads (and vehicles) are maybe very slightly better than those in Michigan. Virginia wasn't terrible, and roads in the more urban areas of California are usually great. Some rural areas of California have bad roads, but not Michigan-level bad. That list is exclusive of states and countries Ive just visited, rather than resided in. I would concur with cold, salty places in general having bad roads. Fluctuations in temperature have a finger in that unappetizing pie, too.

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I seem to have a mild to moderate case of WhOAD!

Especially if you have fluctuations of melt and freeze: early Spring is pothole season. So the only solution for good roads, if you insist on living in such godforsaken circumstances, is diligent upkeep. And that, of course, means taxes to fund public works. There's no getting around that end of it.

But almost every place is going to have its own environmental wear-and-tear on roads; when I visited Louisiana it got so hot that the highway asphalt buckled from the expansion, and naturally there were accidents. Actually saw this happen once or twice in Minnesota, too. And don't gape: On one summer day it got to 103F in MPLS, whereas it was only a balmy 87F in bloody Cairo. Yes, Egypt. Not Illinois.


I've been to Michigan only once; destination Grand Rapids, a wedding reception gig. Lovely state, BTW. We tightly crammed everything into an SUV and took the scenic route: a visit to some town with strong associations to the band KISS (our bass player insisted on this act of devotion), up into the UP and down through the Mackinac bridge; from there as it got more urbanized it got more confusing. Fortunately for the gig, I did no driving, so we didn't get lost. The upshot is that wherever we went on that long trip, I don't recall the roads being notably bad. But maybe I was ... distracted, let's call it.

EDIT: I just checked Google Images for Michigan roads, and gnarly ones were far and away the main subject. Pretty bad - nothing like I'd ever seen. Not to make you Michiganders feel bad, but ... damn. I would have noticed conditions like those on the road trip, though, so maybe we just lucked out.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Bring it on

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You can play beautiful music on an ugly flute
My musical endeavours on my blog