Ultranormal

I tried to go to work today. Already, this doesn’t sound good, does it? I backed up in 4-Wheel Low and hit the wall created by the plow. I figured I could easily go over it. Little did I realize that the wall’s pretty much solid ice. Now my truck is stuck half in the street, half out. The tires are stuck in wells of ice created by repeated attempts to back up, or go forward back into the spot. Two hours of shovelling out the ice that’s jammed under my rear axle, and I’m still stuck with no traction. A friend is going to Costco to buy sand and/or kitty litter to see if that helps. Yeah… I’m stuck.

But, in the one piece of good news, the pictures are up from our snow day.

I had one of those “oh yeah” moments today. See, I drive an SUV. It’s not a huge truck (’97 Chevy Blazer), but it is an SUV that gets less than 25 miles to the gallon. I’ve been feeling guilty recently with all the “oil pays for terrorism” rhetoric around. But, today, I remembered why I have it. Ok, I have it because I’ve got long legs and I hate driving normal cars. They’re completely uncomfortable. I test drove everything under the sun, and the Blazer was the only thing that fit like a glove.

Sorry, back to my “oh yeah” moment. I went out today to shovel the truck out so I could get to work tomorrrow. My two next door neighbors were out there shovelling their sensible four door sedans and looking rather hopeless that they’ll be able to get their cars out tomorrow. Well, after fifteen minutes of shovelling, I got tired of dealing with it, and decided to give it a try and see if I could get out of my parking spot. So, I jumped in, fired it up, put it into reverse, then into 4-WD Low (mmmm, torque) and dropped my foot onto the pedal. I was obviously a little skittish and didn’t want to spin the tires too much, so I took it easy. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard at all. 10 seconds, and boom, I was out of my spot. I pulled back in, hopped out and smiled at my neighbors and beamed, “Thank God for four wheel drive.”

So, I’ll live with my contribution to global warming. I can get out in the elements if I have to. “Oh yeah”, that’s why I have an SUV.

Rebuilding 900+ Movable Type entries takes forever. The 2.6 upgrade went well. I usually download the full-library one just to get everything. This time though, they didn’t include the upgrade scripts. So, nothing worked when I tried it. I figured the missing upgrade scripts were the problem. So, download the upgrade, run mt-upgrade26.cgi and ::poof::, everything’s swell and we’re rebuilding everything.

Today’s been fun. We were looking out the window every five minutes checking to make sure the snow was still falling down. I checked my mail frequently for that magic note that work was close (it came… wooo-hoooo… couch, tv, surfin’ and workin’ in my jammies tomorrow).

Jen and I are watching High School Reunion. It’s pretty sad, when you get right down to it. It just shows how little people change between high school graduation and death. All of the people on the show have the same issues they had in high school. I don’t want to go to either of my high school reunions. I hope they won’t even find me. Oh wait, I’m extremely Google-able. Crap, why didn’t I think about that before? Stupid, stupid Kevin.

24″ and counting. They say it’s not going to stop until mid-afternoon tomorrow. We took Max out to play earlier, and will have pictures up later after we warm up our extremities.

This is more snow that I could have hoped for, really. It could stop anytime now and I would be perfectly happy. I’m thinking we won’t have to go into work tomorrow which means a whole day of sitting in front of the TV with my laptop, attempting to get work done. If not, then I’ll get to take the monster into work and test out the four wheel drive. Either way, a smell a good day coming on.

We’re bracing for a gigantic snowstorm. 8-12 inches in one day is like three feet in Minnesota. They’ve cancelled church, which never ever happens. I think I’ve had church cancelled on me maybe three times in my entire life, and once was because we weren’t allowed to leave the base to attend (I was five and Germany was a little crazy with Iranian terrorists at the time). I’m relieved we’re worried about an act of nature, and not madmen. I can deal with snow. Snow is predictable. Snow falls, lands and accumulates. Terrorists plan, skulk, threaten, surprise.

Someone said today that snow’s the best thing that could have happened this weekend. Snow mutes everything: sound, fire, chemical and biological agents, and even dirty bombs. So, whoever’s responsible for all this snow, thanks.