This is exactly six years ago. It marked the beginning of the 2014 Polar Vortex winter. I had never heard the term “polar vortex” before winter 2014. As a better comedian than I described it, it was like Canada got drunk, staggered down to the US and fell asleep. Something like that. I love Cananananada anyway.

I won’t go through the whole sequence of weather events that led up to this particular pic. Snow and more snow and 13 degrees below zero temps. I took this pic on a Wednesday and I had been working from home since that Monday. I didn’t go to work that Monday because we got something like nine inches of snow overnight on top of whatever was already there. I felt a bit guilty about not schlepping over there. But then I found out that the people who DID schlep over there were met with an unplowed parking lot and when the plow service finally got there, everyone had to go out and push cars around so the lot could be plowed.

The LSCHP was still our Benevolent Despot in those days and he bellowed, “If all we’re gonna do is come over here and push cars around, I think we should all work from home.” I guess back then some of us were still struggling with the kind of work ethic that requires people to put in face time (even though we have ALWAYS had remote workers). Nowadays if it snows at all, I telecommute without even thinking about it. Or sometimes just because no one else is in my house and I want to hang out there alone watching the dogz go by and the Little Brown Birds fight.

Anyway, by that Wednesday, I had been telecommuting for three days and I HAD to get outta the Landfill. So I bundled up and hoofed it over to the Plum Market. And climbed the hill back up to the Maple/Dexter intersection. That snowbank is higher than my head. When I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia, we used snowbanks like that to sled down into our perma-snow neighborhood streets. I think some of the parents even iced them to make them faster. Good old days.

This January 8th is a lot different than the Polar Vortex one. We did get a weeeee bit of snow overnight. Maybe a half inch? I strapped my Yaks onto my Keen sandals for my 0-skunk-30. Walking was fine but unfortunately, that kind of snow slicks up the roads like crazy (AND PEOPLE GO TOOOOOO FAST!!!!) so there were accidents out on the freeways and traffic was hosed in my area when I left to meet MMCB₁ at Barry’s. MMCB arrived at Barry’s naked (I mean she forgot her phone) so she was unable to text me as she waited through I dunno how many light cycles at Dexter/Wagner. I told her something like, “It’s okay that you didn’t text me. I KNEW you’d be late.”

I dunno what the weather will be like for the rest of winter but we do not seem to have persistent polar vortex conditions. Chilly today but going up into the 40s/50s the next couple days…

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