It's not as if they can "predict" the weather

Actually they usually do a pretty good job of late but not this time. A snowstorm that was supposed to blow harmlessly out to sea wound up dumping 10" of wet, sticky glue on Friday. The scene was surreal. The shit piled up on the tree branches until I just heard the sound of breaking wood all around me in the forest.

Since I didn't have warning, I hadn't put the snowplow on my tractor so I had to wrestle with it with my feet deep in slop and sleet falling soaking my jacket. Naturally the plow didn't want to seat properly on the apparatus so I spent half an hour pounding on it with a BFH* until I finally got it to lock on. Then when I did go to plow the snow was so gluey it  just stuck to the blade and wouldn't dump. I had to keep pushing plow loads to the side, the job took me an hour and a half and the driveway is still kind of a mess, though passable. The beech trees were all hanging over the middle of the road so they dumped their load on me as I passed underneath, and it went right down the back of my neck.

Oh yeah, among the innumerable limbs that came down in my driveway was one huge piece of oak that I couldn't move by hand. And neither of my chainsaws would start, for some reason. I did finally manage to push it out of the way with the tractor but I couldn't get it far enough off the road to get the brush out of the way so I had to cut the small stuff apart with loppers.

I should also mention that of course, the power went out. Actually according to the electric company's web site, 100% of the town was blacked out, which is no surprise since all the lines run under trees and the trees were raining branches.  I didn't really eat dinner and I just had to spend the evening reading by flashlight. The power came back on at about 4:30 am, so I do give them credit for working through the night.

The good news is that I had a deadline at work on Friday, and it so happens I completed it on Thursday, fully expecting to come in the next day. Which obviously I did not. But I have today to rest my back.

*That's a Big Fucking Hammer, as every carpenter and mechanic knows. The solution to many a problem.