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two hours of snow shoveling
Monday, January 26 2026
So much snow had fallen in the snowstorm that the bookstore in Woodstock was closed and Gretchen didn't have to go in, something that almost never happens. We drank coffee and did the usual weekend morning thing instead, but not for long because Gretchen thought we should get going on digging out the driveway. But she also wondered if maybe we should just hire a snowplow, assuming we could find one available (unlikely). I decided to just start shoveling and see how it went. So I got some YouTube audio playing on my headphones and started ot shovel. I first dug a path from the front door to the cars, and then I continued out to Dug Hill Road, where I once more dug through the ice wall created by the snowplow. The digging we'd done yesterday afternoon was still evident, but it had been smoothed into a set of gentle undulations. Interestingly, the snow didn't seem any deeper than it had when I'd measured it last night even though it had snowed for much of the night afterwards. When I finally got around to measuring it, the total depth was only 15 inches, meaning that it had compactified on its own. This morning a gentle freezing rain seemed to have been falling, and it had put a very thin crust on the snow's surface and left a very thing veneer of ice on the forsythias.
As I worked mostly from the road inward, Gretchen worked mostly around and behind the cars. After an hour or so, she took a break. But I just kept going, always thinking I might take a break after some milestone but never actually doing it. Then Gretchen came out to say that our neighbor A's boyfriend J would be coming over in ten minutes to help us shovel (like everyone else in our neighborhood, A has a contract with someone to plow her out automatically). J arrived soon after I'd finished creating a driveable path for our cars, so Gretchen put him to work widening that path in places where it was narrow while she told him something amazing she'd just heard about crows on This American Life. Soon thereafter, after having worked continously for about two hours, I went inside to poop and change into something less stinky; I was still wearing the exact same clothes I'd been wearing when Gretchen had complained about my body odor the other night.
Later, Gretchen, J, and I all sat in the living room while J and I drank coffee and we all had a wide-ranging conversation starting with the ongoing horrors perpetuated by ICE in Minneapolis and then eventually switching to a wacky conversation where we discussed body modifications (or augmentations) we would want if they were possible. I said I'd like some way to effortlessly climb trees, and J seemed to think this would require additional pairs of arms. We also briefly discussed whether or not suicide was a form of body modification.
Later in the afternoon, I downloaded the second episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the one with an opening scene featuring a massive (though flaccid) schwanse. One thing about our language is that the word "knight" in oral form needs context, or people won't know if you're talking about a guy with armor on a horse or the period of time when it is dark outside. This confusion strongly applies to, say, the song "Nights in White Satin," since one generally was first exposed to it on the radio, where a DJ might've given an oral reading of the title. For this reason, I'd initially thought the song was about guys on horses wearing fancy white outfits, perhaps (because of the lyrics) never getting to their destination. I suspect A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is having a little fun with this idea as well, as its theme music seems heavily influenced by the song "Nights in White Satin" in particular.
I'd decided my epic snow shoveling today had given me the right to drink booze, which I did atop a 120 mg pseudoephedrine buzz. I later managed to do a little work on my I2C bootloader project, getting the bootloader to finally output debugging information at 115200 baud, the same baud rate the ESP8266 uses when it is running the slave sketch. This means that I can now see clearly in the serial feed when it switches from bootloader to sketch and back again, something that had never been obvious. This is likely to help me stomp out the last few bugs keeping the bootloader from working.
The front of the house this morning before we started shoveling. We're looking east. Click to enlarge.
The woodshed this morning before we started shoveling. We're looking south. Click to enlarge.
Looking at the backs of our cars before we started shoveling. We're looking south. Click to enlarge.
Looking away from Dug Hill Road before we started shoveling. Note the shallow trench showing where Gretchen had shoveled yesterday afternoon. We're looking south. Click to enlarge.
Looking towards Dug Hill Road after we started shoveling. We're looking north. Click to enlarge.
Our Subaru Forester after started shoveling. We're looking southwest. Click to enlarge.
Me after shoveling most of the snow, taken by J with his very fancy camera (which is in some sort of sepia tone). We're looking south. Click to enlarge.
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