So, last night the walk downtown was not great but it was do-able. This morning I strapped on my Yaks and even those puppies were slipping on the ice. A lot of folks were caught unaware by the idiosyncrasies of the series of storms that rolled through this week. Ice followed by snow followed by rain followed by… The main roads are fine. The sidestreets and SIDEWALKS are a total mess. You can’t even walk on the grass because that is also covered by a bit of snow topped with glare ice. To walk through the schoolyard today, I devised a method of walking on the “grass” and stamping down each time I took a step. Why was I stamping? Because otherwise I was randomly breaking through the ice crust in a rather unsettling way. It’s hard to describe and maybe that’s why Inuits have 50 words for snow. But looking that up, it’s much more complicated than what I just said, starting with the label “Inuit”…

This being the Ice Asteroid Ann Arbor, the Nextdoor app has been lit up with threads about falling on ice, how to clear ice, city rules about clearing ice, dog-paw-friendly ice-melt, and how to report people who haven’t cleared their ice. Fortunately, the last thread has been friendly, with most people suggesting helping neighbors clear their sidewalks if they are unable to do so or at least waiting a bit before reporting the ice. Although I have often raged about icy sidewalks, we are dealing with some unusual conditions here, even for the Great Lake State, and I am content to wait things out a bit. If someone still hasn’t cleared their sidewalk after a few more days, I think it’s okay to make a report (but I will not). Otherwise, light a faaaar and read a book, fer kee-reist! You aren’t gonna drop dead if you miss a few days of your walk or run or whatever. That said, I know that there are people who have to walk to the bus, etc. and I’m not sure what answers there are for this complicated issue.

We haven’t been to the Griz for a few Saturdays so we headed down there for lunch today – in the Ninja because ice. The Pensioner was wearing his new NRA hat and the young couple next to us at Jenel’s bar asked about it. Oh no, we’re on the Ice Road Asteroid Ann Arbor and I hope these folks are not totally anti-gun because if they are, we might have a problem here. But no. It turns out the young man was an Afghanistan/Iraq war veteran and he is not anti-gun at all. But he didn’t seem like one of those “they’re gonna take our guns away” people either. Me, I own guns whether I want to or not because I have inherited them from my WWII flight instructor dad. I have never shot a gun and am not the least bit interested in shooting “my” guns. This couple was really fun to talk to and seemed reasonable about some of the extremely complicated, often divisive issues our country faces these days. I think I made it pretty clear that me and GG disagree with some polly-tickle issues but we remain comfortably married *anyway*.

It was good for both of us to talk to some new and intelligent friends (not that we’ll ever see them again). I have spent an unusually large number of days telecommuting lately. Sometimes TP spacifies me but usually not although he leaves me largely alone when I am working. I am not ready to retaaaaar yet (and I don’t think my boss wants me to retaaar either…).

P.S. Our own personal sidewalk is 95% free of ice. I am not bragging here, just giving thanks to The Pensioner for keeping up with things.

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