Snow-Snowing Away

I have the feeling that everyone wishes I would talk about the snow. (Everyone being an extremely relative term - considering I have all of a dozen readers at best.) But I am not going to do that. I don't want to talk about the snow. Just how do I have this alleged feeling? I don't know, but I think it has something to do with being a Kirk and using the Force in some quasi-related definition of irony.

I could discuss the record amounts of snowfall that have hit my hometown of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area, but I won't because D.C. and Philadelphia got walloped worse. I do think that Philly had it coming to them, though. After all, their baseball team allowed the Yankees to win the World Series. I'm just saying.

Most readers would expect me to tell my own story to somehow draw relevance to the bigger things in our lives. We want to connect in that way. We like to link our memories to the events of our shared human experience. If I were to do that, I would bore you with thoughts about my childhood when I recall in 1978 having only had school on Wednesdays for an entire winter. Or, of how I happened to move south in 1993 - the worst winter to have hit Western PA in decades. That would bore you, so I won't mention those facts.

I refuse to quote Mark Twain, who said, "Everyone complains about the weather, but no ever does anything about it." That is a great quote, and one that, based on how long ago Twain lived, shows that the human animal really has not changed all that much over the centuries. As much as we have evolved, we have stayed the same. There might be a Rush reference in there somewhere, but I won't quote either Twain or the Tom-Sawyer-boys, because they have all been quoted before.

Sorry, I just won't discuss the Blizzard of 2010 because it is a mundane topic. After all, the news has covered the event ad nauseum - from snow-packed streets to a plow that actually caught on fire! They have used news time to show a citizen fall, another complain and yet another remove newly accumulated snow from a car window. What gripping footage! I will not pay credence to events that are of nature which we somehow make into a news story. Writing about that would be as ridiculous as the news coverage itself.

Nor will I gain a cheap laugh by telling the story of the first voicemail we heard when our electricity was restored after 22 hours in the near-cold/near-dark of our house. Oh, you would love that one! The message was from our neighbor who is "wintering" in Florida, and she said that she has a snowblower in her garage that we are welcome to use! Great, just when we had finished 5 other driveways. Nope, I won't share that story because you will assume I am making it up.

As much as readers may wish, I will not justify the rambling complaints of my friends and co-workers. These same people who gripe and whine about the snow and the cold and the muck and the ice will be the same who complain in six months because it is too hot, too sticky, too humid or because they are too sun-burned. By then, it will not be the heat that bothers them, but the humidity. Then again, I have not heard a single person say, "Cold enough for you?" yet this winter.

As well, I will not waste valuable (well, again - a relative term) webspace wondering just why people make a rush on groceries at the earliest hint of an approaching storm. But we must give credit where credit is due. This time, the crazies got it right. Heading to the store to grab milk, bread and eggs the very minute WTK-whatever-station broadcast a coming storm was actually a good idea for the first time since 1993.

And, finally, I will not even scrape the ice of the age-old topic about exercise and hard work. I could ramble on about how good I feel after having shoveled snow amounts in the metric tonnage, but I will not do that either. I could remind myself that it is all about mind over matter, this exercise thing; how if I just motivate myself regularly I can in fact work harder to push myself further and to tone up, lose weight and get in shape. After all, if I can find enough energy to shovel during a snowfall of six days straight, I could definitely do it for a standard work-out routine. No one wants to read about that! Besides, if I were to write that fact, someone would undoubtedly use it against me in the future.

So as much as you and every other reader would like to have read about my views on THE STORM, I am sorry but I cannot and will not do that. Maybe next year when we have a serious and substantial storm I will rant about winter. For now, I will just bid you good day and get back out there with shovel in hand. I mean, really, what is 26 inches of snow over 6 days when you have multiple driveways to clear?