Post-Blizzard Ow.

My arms are so sore. SO so so sore! The warnings for shoveling snow usually have to do with saving your back by lifting with your legs, but my back is okay, while my arms are so sore I can't lift them without groaning. Showering was interesting! I'm also overall weary, and hungry like raaaaaarrrrrr, but it's the arms that are the biggest problem.

I went out for half an hour yesterday afternoon, and got this far:

Rest, then another half hour, and most of the way around the car was clear (though not to the tailpipe, so I didn't even start it on Saturday).

The plow guys finally came after dark, around 6:15, and the crew descended with snow-blowers and shovels and plows. Good thing, too: it would take me a week to dig out the end of the driveway, at my pace. You can see from my view this morning that things did improve.

And after another solid hour of work, I got my car clear.

Not clear enough to drive, I don't mean, but enough to get it out, theoretically, and for the sun to do a little work for me in the meantime. And a couple of hours later:

It has. I may be able to get out to dinner at my friends' house tonight after all. The dinner that was supposed to be Saturday after the Bruins matinee night game postponed game. (Someone at NESN understands, though: they re-ran the Bruins Cup-winning game from 2011 last night instead. Love them.)

My little city isn't plowing around here today. The width you see isn't enough for two cars wide, and that's from being plowed Saturday; I haven't heard a plow all day today. I get that it's not a main street, but when will they come back--and what will it do to my driveway when they do? The plow crew didn't do the greatest job, but I know it could be worse, and I don't know that I get tomorrow off work, so it would be nice to be able to get out of the driveway in the morning. Only time will tell, I guess.

A couple of other pictures from Saturday, when people in the neighborhood used the snow as an excuse to break out the snowshoes for a walk:

And let a kid play in what you can't tell is the middle of an intersection:

See? Sort of?

And it turns out that my neighbor has pants to snow-blow in that must be designed to not get lost in snowdrift accidents:

Today, meanwhile, I saw some impressive frozen drips across the street:

Another time, I'll go into the knitting I worked on during the blizzard, but for now I'm off to rest my arms. I'll leave you with something even more impressive than my pictures: someone filmed 36 hours of blizzard out his window, and condensed it into a minute. Time-lapse blizzard! To me, the best part was how the snow piled up into the yard when people were shoveling. Whoa!