New Thing #351: Snow Parking Rules In Effect...In My Driveway

This New Thing has its roots way back in New Thing #40 back in February. And really, it reflects the fact that after 8-plus years as a homeowner, I'm kind of figuring things out.

I mean, I try…but I have no clue what I'm doing most of the time.

Every so often, though, I learn from something I did or did not do, and the next go-around I do better.

This is one of those times.

Every time it snows it's not the shoveling I mind so much as it is the digging out the cars.

We don't park in our garage - it's basically storage. That's another story for another day.

So, for eight years, when I dug out from a storm the cars would be parked side by side and I'd shovel a path between them and then shovel out the foot of the driveway.

Before the blizzard earlier this year, in the spirit of trying New Things, I wondered if it would be beneficial for me to park the cars one in front of the other. I'm not sure if it was, but I kind of liked it better, mainly because I only had to dig out one side of the cars.

I did the same thing on Sunday. It wasn't the largest snowfall we've had - it was only about 6 or 8 inches I think. But Sunday's snow presented other problems - the top layer was ice, and it was a heavy snow to shovel. The plow residue at the driveway's entrance was really difficult to move. But once I had the sides and fronts of the cars shoveled out, I moved the front car to the open side of the driveway, and I was able to get to work digging them out of the snow.

I'm not sure if this strategy saves me any time or if it's definitively better than the other way I used to shovel. But I like the idea of clearing out that whole side of the driveway, and how it looks when I reach the end of the driveway.

And on cold, wet mornings in the midst of some heavy-duty shoveling, feeling like it's a better way is just as good as having a better way.

New Thing #169: A Picture-Perfect Rainbow

Had a quick thunderstorm roll through Monday evening. It hit at just about 5:30pm, and everything was back to normal by about 6:54pm.

How do I know?

Well, those are the times when our power went out and was restored, respectively.

But it wasn't so much the storm that impressed me and my daughters as it was the resulting image.

I was downstairs turning lights back on and making sure everything was in order when my daughter shouted out, "I see a rainbow!"

(I don't think she spotted the rainbow on her own - I'm pretty sure the neighbors who were gathering outside drew her attention to the window, and she followed their gazes to see the rainbow up above. My daughters are kind of nosy that way.)

I came upstairs to see it. Apparently our house must have been the best viewing spot on the block for the whole thing because the neighbors were in our driveway trying to take pictures.

("They're in our driveway," my daughter reported.

"They're just taking pictures of the rainbow," I told her. "It's OK."

"Not with me," she replied.)

It was the type of rainbow straight out of a cartoon. A perfect arc - from behind one set of houses on the right all the way to another set of houses on the left. It could easily have led to a pot of gold.

It was picture-perfect, really. Sorry that my pictures of it are less than perfect.

New Thing #62: Living Earth App

Starbucks had another good app 'Pick of the Week' last week. It's called 'Living Earth - Clock & Weather'.

The clock feature involves an alarm, gives you the time of day...in other words, it's not anything different than what your phone already offers.

But the weather part - that's kind of cool.

I'm not going to lie - I won't use this app all that much. But it's got a good 'wow' factor to break out every so often.

As you can see in the image above it gives you a satellite view of the earth, and you can get an idea of cloud cover around the world, as well as temperature, wind, and humidity. You can get an idea of the locations of big storms too.

I'm no weather geek (although the amount of weather apps on my phone is disproportionate to that statement), but I sense this app will help give me a more global understanding of weather. Or just a more global view of everything, really - if you rotate the globe you can get an idea of where it's night, morning, etc.

Like I said - this is more of an occasional app rather than an everyday app...but that's OK. Most of them are, really.

But in this year of New Things, it's something where in the past I never would have stopped to take the card at Starbucks, enter the code, and get the normally $1.99 app for free. And I never would have known how sunny it usually is in South America.

New Thing #57: Appreciating and Sharing The Beauty of Snow

Mondays are tough. It's the first day of week - there's the ol' Garfield "I hate Mondays" feel to it in the first place.

On top of that, for me it's the longest day of my work week schedule-wise - it's non-stop once I get in the door.

And when I leave my house, it's garbage day - so there's a lot of work to get out of the house between putting the last of the garbage together and taking that out to the curb (can't do it the night before because of the raccoons) and getting my daughter in the car and hitting the road.

One other element - this year is super-busy.

So Monday, February 25, 2013, was one of those busy mornings - especially because it was returning to school after a week off - but unlike most mornings, I took a second to appreciate the beauty of the scene around me.

And now I'm sharing that with you.

Let me set the scene: Here in Framingham, Massachusetts it snowed pretty much non-stop all day Sunday. It started late Saturday, and there was a changeover for a bit to rain, then a heavy, large-flaked snow fell for 20-plus hours.

The picture above is the view I caught when I put the garbage at the curb. I was so struck I took the picture at left...because look at that sky. There's a nice contrast between those snowy branches and the sun-streaked sky as the sun rose on a beautiful, non-snowy day. At least, I thought so. (I think you can click on the pictures so you can appreciate the full images. I hope.)

Whenever I see the trees looking that snow-covered (and sometimes ice-coated) I think of two things: One is that I never saw a scene like that growing up. There were never enough trees in my part of Queens to give that kind of a snowscape. (There were other snowy scenes, just not like the ones I'm talking about.)

The second thing I think of is a storm that hit in late 2005 or early 2006. At the time I worked at a school in Sudbury - a commute of 10 or 15 minutes from home. I had lived in the area only about a year, and I was still very unfamiliar with what to me were very country roads. I did not know my way around very well.

We were either let out of school early or it was right at the end of the school day that I started making my way home...and I encountered some downed branches one way, and then there was a stuck school bus another way, so instead of waiting I went a way I had never gone before. Bottom line, it took me more than an hour to get home that day. But I ended up on a road (if I remember correctly I ended up going north when I had to go south, and I eventually did find my way home) that was lined with snow-covered branches overhead.

It was the most beautiful and scary thing I'd experienced to that point - scary because I was legitimately lost. But beautiful because I think that was the first time I experienced that kind of snowy scene.

But Monday morning I went down a road that had a similar look to the one from seven or eight years ago. So I snuck this picture to share that with you:

Next Monday I promise I'll go back to being a grump.

New Thing #40: A Blizzard In Pictures

After a little more than 24 hours of snow, and a little more than 26 inches on the ground, the Blizzard of February 2013 (Blizzard Nemo?) is over. I'm taking a break from digging out to put together the final result of some of the pictures I've taken the past couple of days.

I was hoping the blizzard would present me with some kind of a 'New Thing', and a big thanks to my friend Anne for providing some inspiration for this idea.

Here's a picture-by-picture account of the snow in Framingham, Massachusetts.

I tried to take the picture the exact same way each time - it's a look out my front door at my driveway. I think it pretty well captures the stages of the storm:

New Thing #39: Snow Pants

You may or may not have heard, there's a blizzard a-comin'. I'm prepared.

I bought a six-pack of Shock Top last night, I parked the cars in such a way that it will ease my shoveling load, and I have snow pants.

Snow pants? Aren't those for skiers and children? Aren't you neither?

No, I am not a skier or a child.

But I am going to be the smartest shoveler on the street.

I've thought about snow pants for a few years - every time I've stood in too-high snow and my pants have gotten soaked, I've thought, "I should get waterproof pants."

Recess duty in the snow and shoveling out from a storm are the most common times this happens.

About a month ago I was in a sporting goods store, and they had some winter stuff on sale. Among that stuff - snow pants. I made the purchase.

So now, after this storm drops its supposed three feet on us (and with drifts it could be up to five feet...I'm a little concerned for our front door area, which is a wind trap where leaves gather anytime there's a gust...I hope the 30+ inches of snow finds another place to settle), I'm prepared to go out in my snow pants and shovel all the livelong day without my pants getting wet.

And then, since it's been a couple of years since I could, I'm going to play with my daughters in the snow. And I'll look at them in their snow pants, and for the first time ever, I won't have to be jealous.