Well, it was mighty interesting watching the Metrodome in Minneapolis collapse. Good thing nobody was on the 20 yard line when it happened. We have the same design here, and when we we get snow, they pump super hot air between the two layers and open up the drains. In a few rare instances of extreme snow, they’ve deflated it so that it’s down to the support cables and let them support it while the snow melts and drains. Of course, we’re offering them our help – including inflation/deflation expertise and spare roof panels. According to wikipepedia, the Twin Cities only average about 45 inches of snow a year, so I guess it’s understandable that they don’t know how to deal with it. Hopefully everybody out there is OK.

Here, it rained yesterday. Not constantly, though, which was good. As the snow receded, some poor guy’s body popped up. He was only wearing pants and shoes (I highly recommend at least a shirt from about November ’til June). There remains enough snow to leave footprints, though, which was bad news for a freshman on the SU Football team. Well, formerly on the team. I guess he was doing some sort of reverse Santa thing, liberating flat screen TVs and whatnot from other students’ apartments. Unfortunately for him, he left footprints in the snow tracing back to his abode, where he was found with the purloined products.

So, now he’s in jail, charged with a string of burglaries, and is no longer on the team (totally expunged from the SU Athletics website in a matter of hours – very efficient; they must have that O’Brien guy from 1984 working for them). Goodbye, free education (not to mention no Pinstripe Bowl). That’s the problem when they recruit kids from Long Island – they just don’t take into account the whole snow factor.

And it was warm enough to work on the van and get it running (thanks once again to my friend John, who was willing to stick a screwdriver in the coil wire to check for spark while I turned it over; ever since I accidentally shorted a wrench across a pair of battery terminals, I’ve been a little gun shy when it comes to automotive electrical shit; not enough space to work and too much metal – especially when you’re standing in the snow, but to get to the distributor in the van, you have to break in through the inside), although the “service engine soon” light is still on, and the belt – while totally unrelated to anything we did – is pretty squeaky now). So I have a way to get plywood and lumber and pipe and whatnot again, so, for that reason alone, it was a happy and productive weekend.

I also got the garage very cleared out, and should have plenty of room for 4 tons of pellets. I took my existing stock and piled it in front of the front door that we covered with plastic last week (kind of a wood pellet snadbag system, designed to hold back the flood of heat to the outside), and built a platform for my tractor carryall, which I used to haul all kinds of shit out to the sheds.

Congratulations to the Akron Zips on their first-ever National Championship. Seems awfully late in the year for soccer, and I’m glad they weren’t playing the match in the Metrodome.

It’s still pretty warm out this morning, and it looks like there’s a little bit of drizzle. They’re promising us that that will change for the ride home from work tonight, though. Temperatures will fall throughout the day today (should make everything nice and icy), and then the snow starts up again. Oh boy. They can’t say how much we’ll get (or exactly who will get it), so we wait.

The obligatory Christmas stories are making the rounds on the news. Right now, the “don’t get all sloppy drunk at the office holiday party” one is running. Our party is on Wednesday, in fact, and if I can figure out how to avoid it entirely, I will. Not that it isn’t enjoyable (last year, I watched the “Jawhorse” infomercial, which led me to decide that I absolutely needed one – and it was one of my better tool purchases. Yes, I am willing to make the Jawhorse the official sponsor of this blog. Are the folks at Rockwell listening?), but, well, I’m not drinking (have to drive home, so even if I was drinking, I wouldn’t be drinking – managed to escape death during my misbegotten youth, and have long since learned my lesson), I’m not eating pizza and wings these days (a miserable existence, I admit), and I don’t really want to talk about work. Personally, if I’m not gonna be working, I’d just as soon go home.

I guess I’m just not festive.