Dec. 15th, 2007

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Well, it's been a busy week. From my fall on the ice on monday, my butt is still extremely sore, right at my tailbone. So I'm 99% sure I broke my tailbone. there is no treatment for that, other than painkillers and taking it easy, and I'm already doing that.

thursday we had our first serious snowstorm of the season. about 12:30, the first flakes of snow were falling, by 1pm, it was falling at blizzard(1-2 inches per hour) rate. Our company president decided to change the venue for our company christmas dinner from the resturant in Providence, RI (normally an hours drive away) to a resturant around the corner. this, as it turned out, was a very good thing. I had been hoping for it to be cancelled, but then I'd have been stuck in the nightmare traffic for hours trying to get home.

Instead, I was eating dinner with my coworkers in a rather nice italian restaurant, watching the snow falling down outside. We had a nice dinner, paid for by the company, did our gift exchange (I ended up with a small motorized moose plush that sings 'Grandma got run over by a raindeer' when you press the button.) By the time we finished dinner, the snow had largely stopped falling, and the traffic was merely crappy.

But it was, in the chinese curse fashion, an interesting drive home. Most of the trip was on route 128, from Canton to Weston. (128 is Bostons inner beltway, three or four lanes each way) Highlights were the four wheel drive pickup spinning out and slamming into the snow bank so had that he managed to wedge one of those highway traffic safety barrels underneath his car. I don't think he realized that it was there, as he spun his way out (facing the wrong way on the highway, as I'm trying to slow down without spinning out myself before I hit him!) It was sort of amusing to see him driving up the highway with the open bottom of the barrel scooping up snow as he is driving along. the whole time he was spinning around, I could see him spinning his wheels nonstop. Another four wheel driver who hasn't figured out that that is the acceleration pedal, not the traction pedal. Idiot

a few miles later, I emerged from the several inches of slush on the road to a stretch that was fairly clear, and made my best speed of the drive that night, up to nearly 35 miles per hour. But I quickly learned to not go any faster than that, as looming up out of the darkness, there is a car abandoned in the middle lane, and the snowplows swerved around it, leaving a snowbank piled high across the lanes to the right of the abandoned car. This repeats about a dozen times on the rest of the drive.

But all good things come to an end, and reach another stretch of highway that has a couple inches of slush on it. Slowing down, and keeping a big distance from the cars around me, I make my way down the highway towards my exit. uh oh, blue lights ahead. Slow down. damn, thats a tractor trailer, jackknifed and blocking two lanes of the highway. Slowly make my way around this, to see the other tractor trailer, and the four or five other cars involved, scattered into the snowbank on both sides of the highway. I hardly notice the matching accident on the other side of the highway, which has a several mile traffic jam behind it that I see the rest of my drive down the highway.

Getting off the highway, I make my way home fairly uneventfully. Roads are relatively clear, and little traffic to get in the way. I have to shovel my driveway enough to get the car off the street. fortunately the snow is light and fluffy, so it doesn't take that long to clear off a patch large enough to park.

Friday was uneventful, it got above freezing and the sun shined, so the roads all were cleaned off by the hard working plow crews. and someone came by our house and plowed out the driveway. I don't know who did this, but thanks.

We have a nor'easter scheduled for sunday. (starting shrtly after midnight tonight) I'm staying home tomorrow. Gotta go shopping today. I'll take the snow, since we don't have mudslides, brush fires, gigantic bugs, and earthquakes here.

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