Calgary has had a lot of snow this year. More than usual, I'm fairly certain. Of course, every year when we get even an inch of snow everyone seems to lose their minds and memories and react with shock and awe...
"SNOW???? IN CANADA???? OUTRAGE!!!!!!"
...it's like we've never seen it before.
Anyway, I'm no Darr Maqbool (former local expert in kilopascals), but I am pretty sure that I can say with confidence- hella snow in Calgary these days.
Oh man. That guy was amazing.
This excess of the "white stuff" creates an environment that can bring out the best- and the worst- in people. An example of the worst:
Down the street from us is a rental house which is currently occupied by an unknown number of jerks. The guy who owns it fixed it up and built a really nice fence and then apparently didn't spend a lot of time weeding out the crazy when he found a tenant. One day, we were driving home after dark- but not really that late- and saw a couple police cars on our street. Then we saw a few cops. Then we saw a cop with a huge rifle. Then we saw some scrubby, pantless dude being dragged down the street by two of the burliest cops I've ever seen.
Turns out, the pantless dude comes from the rental, and he had been beating up his wife. I think she's since left and taken her kid with her- good. He's still there- bad.
Anyway, he is generally sequestered to the inside of his domain, but the other day he had parked his work truck in front of his house. This ordinarily is not anything that one would even notice, let alone care about.
This time, though, he had chosen to pull over after another huge dump of snow, in a pile of approximately five feet of snow, ice and the bodies of those who didn't make it.
And his work truck is no ordinary truck.
It is this truck:
Actually, that's not entirely fair. This one is from a different company.
What you might not be able to see in this picture is that on top of the truck is a giant arm with a cherry picker on top. The entire truck is huge.
The result:
...only with two raging dudes marching around, swearing about how they are morons. In the end, they freed the truck, through the combination of brute force and dumb luck. Their first strategy (well, second, after saying "FU*K!!!" a lot, and discovering that it was ineffective) was to jam the crane arm into the neighbour's yard over and over, hoping the truck would "jump" out of the snow. That was not to be.
But it was SUCH a good idea!!!
Other people react more rationally. Our neighbour Wayne, the greatest neighbour of all time, wears the cutest snowsuit a fully grown man can wear and wakes up at the crack of dawn (or much earlier, given that it's winter and sunrise is approximately half past never) and runs out and shovels the sidewalk for three houses in all directions.
If Wayne were a cookie...he'd look like this but with a shovel.
I also have an amazing snowsuit. It's so amazing, in fact, that a friend borrowed it and then apparently a bunch of people wore it on his ski trip. My hope is that no one wore it without underwear. It doesn't breathe well.
As you can see, it is the utmost in fashion. It will never go out of style.
I am always looking for opportunities to wear a onesie, and snow day provides many an opportunity. I await the next winter wedding where I can show off my winter formal wear to the adoring eyes. People will be all like this...
That. Is. AMAZING.
Over the winter holiday, Bob and I went to the mountains and went skating, hiking and tobogganing. We've also gone skiing, built snow forts and had snowball fights. Playing in the snow is pretty much the best, as long as it isn't so bitterly cold out that you breathe in and all the moisture in your lungs freezes and renders you dead.
Calvin and Hobbes always made good use of wintertime.
This last one is the very last Calvin and Hobbes comic published...it makes me all teary when I look at it. What an amazing man Bill Watterson is.
Another thing that one can do in the snow is build an igloo. It takes a certain quality and depth of snow to be successful, but one can sort of fake an igloo by digging out a hole in a big pile of snow and then hollowing it out from the inside.
A big pile of snow like the one in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD at the end of my street.
Why, you ask, is there a big pile of snow in the middle of the road? Surely it didn't fall that way from the sky.
Surely no one PUT IT THERE.
OR DID THEY???
The story goes like this...
Once upon a time, there was another jerk on Heather's street. There are more than a few. This particular jerk has a driveway. He also has a yard. He doesn't like to have snow on either, apparently.
One day, Jerk went outside and discovered CALAMITY!
Winter had come.
If only he were this attractive.
Shockingly, with winter also came snow. ALL. OVER. HIS. YARD.
UNACCEPTABLE!!!
He also, to his horror, discovered the snow had the AUDACITY to fall ALL OVER HIS DRIVEWAY.
What to do???
Well, as anyone with half a brain knows, that snow MUST BE MOVED. As anyone lacking the other half the brain knows, it will be moved ONTO THE STREET.
We watched the dude heave approximately seventeen metric tonnes of snow onto the road directly in front of his driveway. This is stupid because:
1. He could put it on his lawn. Oh wait, I forgot, for some weird reason that is not an option.
2. He could spread it out. Oh wait, I forgot, this would make sense.
3. He was unable to traverse this massive pile with his car after he had built it. Essentially, he had blocked himself in with his own stupidity.
It was also terribly inconvenient for the hundreds of other people who need to pass that particular stretch of road and do not drive, let's say...a tank. Or an airplane. My little Pochecho doesn't do well when faced with mounds of snow larger than he is, so while this dude was building his impassable masterpiece, we came up with a plan...
STEP ONE:
Make an igloo out of the pile of snow.
STEP TWO:
Play in the igloo.
STEP THREE:
Profit.
It's foolproof!
Moral of this story: I don't always get a snow day. But when I do, I like to make the best of it.
