Always Something

These last few days really have been nuts with all the snow that has come down. We got right around 55 centimeters this week! I knew that it was going to be cold here, but I had NO IDEA it was going to be anything like this. Click here to check out the front page of the newspaper today! In case you don't, here's a couple of interesting tidbits: "Metro Moncton received 131 centimetres (52 inches) of snow last month, making it the fourth snowiest December recorded in the city's history." and "By the end of yesterday, the total accumulation to date this winter was somewhere in the 125 to 135 centimeter (49-53 inches) range. That breaks the record set in 1971, a year when Metro Monctonians thought a mere 109 cm was a lot of snow to have lying around this early in the year." and "Winter is technically only in its second week." By the way, the average snowfall in Illinois for the entire winter is 42 inches! This is more snow than Ray or I have ever seen at one time.

Needless to say, running errands today wasn't a ton of fun for me. I made a trip to the grocery store, only to get the cart stuck in snow on the way back out to the car. The snow banks, where the city plow has come through, are so high that they're very difficult and dangerous to see around. My haircut this afternoon went great, until the trip to the car when the parts that weren't completely dry froze.

That brings me to tonight when I got home from the gym. I pull up to the house right around 5pm, it's already dark outside. I tried to put my key into the deadbolt and IT WAS FROZEN!!! Ray had a hockey game tonight, so he wasn't around for the show. Our next door neighbor was outside shoveling and saw that I was having troubles getting inside - mind you it's -20 Celsius (right around -8 Fahrenheit) with a wind chill of -32 Celsius. He stopped by but wasn't able to open the door either. I remembered the owner of the house telling me that the back door has the same deadbolt if I ever needed to use that door. I trekked myself around to the back of the house (through the 6 feet snow drift) and the key didn't work!!! At that point I was freezing and called Ray. I told him I was going to the store to get some lock de-icer - I ended up buying 3 of them for future use. I used a full bottle and that damn door still wouldn't open (but I could finally get the key inside the lock). Ray ended up running home right at the start of his hockey game with an industrial heat gun (like a high power hair dryer) that apparently the team uses to heat up the titanium hockey sticks in order to bend the blade. Uncle Ray warmed up the lock and was able to open the door. Words really can't describe how cold it is outside. It makes the most mundane of tasks complicated. After 4 hours inside and a warm shower, I'm FINALLY warming up. I'm liking this weather less and less everyday!!!