Lucky timing for me. Have to go to an interview Monday, getting car fixed up Thursday. My snowmen are melted from warm weather a couple weeks ago, and I’m ready to build more.
@katylava I imagine the residents will treat it as no big deal, while you’ll be fairly astonished at the amount of snow that fell that no one really gives much thought to. Maybe @jbartus can chime in here?
@katylava Get used to 1" of snow is no big deal (unlike Dallas where that would be the media event of the year) - like seriously you consider that snow? Now 1’ in 12-24 hours people might start to complain… BUT Boston has plenty of snow plows, salt and experience both clearing streets and driving in that shit (if you do not have experience driving in that crap go to a mall parking lot when it is closed with a bunch of snow and make yourself skid and get out of it).
New windshield wipers though would be prudent (streaked windshields from slush kicked up on your windshield is a PITA), and making sure your washer fluid reservoirs are full plus carry a gallon in your car in the winter to fill it up if need be while out driving. And have a decent snow brush and scraper. And something to thaw the key hole if necessary in cause the lock is frozen and you need to thaw it via the keyhole (no you do not need a propane torch - that is over kill although I will admit to having used one. Once. Carefully though so as not to singe the paint. They do make a small battery operated little thingy you put in there and magic it is thawed.
@katylava HAT!! mittens, socks (and preferably boots so you don’t get wet feet - if you have to walk long distances through slush putting your feet in plastic bags and then put your shoes on helps keep your feet dry, although your shoes will still get wet), layers since it probably isn’t worth buying a winter jacket (and a sweater that covers your butt helps - so you will look silly outside - so what… you can take most of it off when you go inside). If it is windy a windbreaker, preferably on the outside so you don’t feel the wind all the way to your skin.
All I wanted is some yogurt and stuff to take for lunch this week. Had to suffer through the idiots buying food for the next month at the market. I seriously hope all their power goes off and everything they just bought spoils. I’ll be headed to work Tuesday regardless of the snow. The idiot drivers bother me but the snow doesn’t.
Seems I am on the cut-off for rain/snow on the eastern shore of MD. We have predictions of rain only Tues/Wed. We will see. Never trust weatherpersons - unless they are hot.
But if I lived in Philly, I would always trust Sheena Parveen (even her name is hot)
@PlacidPenguin I love visiting Philly. My work HQ is around that area, and I did a lot of training with a previous company steps from Rocky. But no, I am way past living in any major city.
@CaptAmehrican That map still had me in rain. The ES is weird. Baltimore can be bombarded with snow 2 hrs away, and then we will barely get any. Has something to do with us basically being an island.
@mfladd Sheena Parveen left Philly. She’s now working closer to you in D.C. Fun fact: She was dating Scott Hartnell (Predators/Flyers/Blue Jackets) who was dating a girl I know but left her for Sheena. As for current Philly meteorologists, Cecily Tynan is still my favorite. Still smoking hot at 47.
@mfladd Btw, while Cecily is the hottest doing the weather, the absolute hottest woman on Philly news right now is the traffic gal on CBS 3 in the morning - Meisha Johnson.
@cinoclav Haha…I was actually thinking of you (being in philly, not the “there is nothing wrong with that” way) when I wrote that. Funny, we had a super adorable weather girl here on the shore and then she left for D.C., to my great sadness.
@mfladd Yeah, she’s pretty damn adorable too. Many years ago I was a manager for Herman’s Sporting Good’s. I worked at a store right up the street from a couple of the tv stations. I’d always run into Cecily in the morning as her and her crew got coffee and bagels at the shop next to my store. She’s without a doubt one of the nicest news persons I’ve ever had the pleasure of chatting with.
@mfladd Yeah, I think the Bay absorbs the energy of the storm. Something about the water being unseasonably warm, so it’ll cut you off.
I’m just south of BWI, so it’s gonna be interesting!
@Brooklyn11218 I rate snow by how high it gets on my 4x4. If it starts interfering with the axle and suspension parts, it’s a challenging drive. If it’s over the bumper, it’s a snowmageddon. When we had our 4’ snowmageddon here in Maryland, my wife and I had been dutifully shoveling off the driveway periodically, only to gradually realize we were just trapping my truck in the bottom of a box. When the snow plows came they added another two feet plus of ice to the box. Doh!
I had just moved to NYC when a big storm came along and shut everything down from Washington thru Boston and parts in between and inland.
The plows hit the city streets and left behind snowpiles well over 8" high. Alternate side of the street parking rules were suspended for months, it took till April for the last snowpiles to melt.
Of course, in Manhattan, you’re not really inconvenienced to the degree that you would be elsewhere. Everything you want - which is to say food, alcohol, music, and movies - is open by the 2nd day.
@f00l I rememberate that storm (was in HS)… also early 1994 was pretty bad.
This storm turned out to be a pita not due to depth (was maybe six inches total) but due to ice content. My car is still buried, tho that’s because I’ve not needed to move it since Tuesday and was away until this evening… I was going to back it out of its “cave” this evening (I can get in from sidewalk side), but the woman whose driveway is immediately behind me got home between the time I checked that she still hadn’t and I got my jacket on and walked outside… I’d have asked her if I could get my car out, but her kid was asleep in the carseat and she clearly didn’t want to wake her up). I don’t need to move it until Tuesday morning for work, so I’ll probably back it out tomorrow.
What is this thing called snow of which you speaketh? We haven’t had much this season and because of little moisture, our state has experienced massive wildfires. We’ve had over 750,000 acres burn so far.
I can’t even begin to explain how miserable this is going to be. I live in one of the snowiest cities in the northeast but went to a destination wedding in Key West over the weekend. Plan was to drive home, show my daughters some parts of the Eastern Seaboard they have never seen, stop in Arlington and see my grandson (maybe acknowledge his parents too) and then head for home in Upstate NY. Just pulled into Savannah. Knowing that I am driving into a winter storm in a part of the country that has no clue how to deal with it is keeping me awake. Not to mention that my wife is worried that she is going to miss a conference in NYC because downstate NY can’t handle snow any better than Washington DC can. Good lord, when I woke up yesterday it was sunny and 75 degrees. Should have stayed in the Keys until May. Wow. I’ve become that cranky old guy.
@sammydog01 Exactly. All of us who live along the upstate Thruway corridor - Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany - just take quick snow removal and winter driving tactics for granted.
@Frcal@sammydog01 I agree. I drove that regularly when in college (Rochester) and home (NE Ohio snow belt). I think school closed maybe twice K-12 and through 4 years of college. Snow up to the bottom of the car doors overnight was not uncommon. I rode my bicycle to high school in the snow on a regular basis because I lived fourish houses too close to be able to take the bus (had to live 2 miles from school). That being said I had to be careful not to skid and have my bike fall over going down the hill with the traffic light on the bottom if I needed to stop.
I don’t get the hype here. I lived in New Hampshire for 24 years and expected snow storms in March as much as December. I always expected one last one in April too. It’s just a snowstorm in a colder region during winter people.
@PlacidPenguin I’m not a fan of them either but that’s not what I’m judging here. I’m judging the hype around such a normal winter event…whether desired or not.
My intent was to convey that I don’t like the snow, so I’m annoyed when any snow is called for. Especially when it’s 18"-24" as per a map in this thread.
@denboy see the thing is this is not a normal march event. We have had less then 1 inch all winter and are due for 12. So imagine 12 times more snow then all year. Yeah that.
@CaptAmehrican Seems perfectly normal to me to get a snowstorm in March (still winter), in the northeast. Using Boston averages, March averages just 1" less per year of snow than December. This one looks big, which is noteworthy, just seems overhyped to me.
@denboy totally agree with you… although it makes me snicker, because a friend who recently moved to this country was like “oh, so winter is over” when we hit 60 degrees a couple of times now. I laughed and told him, noooo, be prepared for snow all the way until May. He REALLY thought I was joking.
@PlacidPenguin Gotcha. I remember experiencing a mix of milder and snow filled winters but a streak of mild winters probably would’ve adjusted my expectations there
No snow here, just a 100% chance of a blizzard of criminals and gangsters and total f’ing losers stealing other peoples cars and breaking into their houses and ripping off trailers from innocent people who thought it would be a good idea to stop at a hotel overnight in the city I live. Shooting people and car jacking and stabbings and domestic violence SWAT responses fueled by drugs and alcohol induced rage. Drug overdoses and rape and children being abused and molested. Expecting a blanket of used hypodermic needles from Heroin junkies in the parks today. But, the weather looks good. Mid to upper 70’s all week bumping into 80 by the weekend. With plenty of blue skies, puffy clouds, and bright sunshine every day.
Anyone care to guess where I live?
@accelerator Sounds like some parts of my stomping grounds. Southern California? orrr Chicago. edit. Scratch the Southern California… we were 90’s this weekend.
Snowstorm of 1978
This was the storm that hit shortly after I arrived in Manhattan.
Just as the storm began, my younger brother flew into NYC. He had applied as an xfer student to a bunch of famous name schools in Boston and CT and other NE states. The plan was that he would take my car and go to all his campus visits and interviews.
Only the roads were closed. All of them. The Massachusetts State Police had threatened to arrest anyone driving in anything other than four-wheel drive vehicle or snowmobile, and had asked even the four-wheelers to stay off the streets except for emergencies.
The car my brother was planning to borrow for this excursion was a Ford Pinto. For extra safety. So of course, he decided to go. He just waited for news that the snowplows were out.
The snow did pack down well, and did not turn immediately to ice. He crept along at about 15-20 mph and managed to get to the first campus - snow was still coming down. The campus was closed, except for admin offices. They were astonished to see him, but the place they had for him to stay was available. They called in a couple of profs who lived on campus to do the interviews. They warned him it was a bad idea to proceed onward to Mass and offered to put him up for a few days.
Younger brother, being optimistic, decided to go on toward Boston. So what if there was a “shoot on sight” warning from the State Police for anyone on the turnpike or interstates? So what if all but emergency businesses were closed by government order?
So he proceeded onwards. In the fab Pinto. That had TX plates. (Plows had been out, but snow was still falling hard). Shortly after he crossed the Mass state line, a cop pulled him over. So younger bro put on his best “idiot Texan” persona and pulled out his interview paperwork from Famous School. In the heaviest yokel accent he could manage, he went on about how he’d never seen so much snow, wow, could the nice policeman please tell him if he was going the right way to get to his interview? The cop shook his head, told him he might get arrested or have the car impounded, and it was his risk. And pointed him down the road.
This happened twice more. The second time, it was on the outskirts to Boston, a state cop heard his wide-eyed, heavily over-accented, new-to-all-this story, how he’d managed to get all the way from Manhattan, looked at his paperwork, and said “I know you’re putting me on, but I like you. I’ll get you to the campus. I bet they admit you just because you showed up.”
And the cop escorted him to campus and found him an illegal parking space. The cop said, “They won’t tow you for a few days, they have too much else to do. Make sure you’ve moved the vehicle by the time the businesses re-open”.
So younger bro went wandering around campus and found an admin building with somebody in it, who called somebody else, who took him to admissions. A few people who worked there lived on or right by campus and had come in, and he said they were in shock to see him. Again, they called a prof who lived on campus to come interview him, since most staff was at home. They made him hot tea and fed him. The next day, they wanted him to come back in for another go-round, he was considered such a curiosity, more on-campus staff came in to look at the idiot Texan who made it thru the storm and the closed roads.
My younger brother can be very charming. His other interviews were a bit less story-worthy, but he got into every university he applied to. The two universities he interviewed at during the worst of the storm both later called trying to get him to enroll. He did choose one of them.
@f00l What I recall of that blizzard was that I couldn’t walk in the snow, even following my father’s footsteps! They had to assign me my own “big kid” to help me off the bus because the snow was so much taller than I was!! (I was second to the shortest in my kindergarten class, and 11th from the tallest in my high school class, including the guys – I grew somewhere in between )
Of course, the plows dumped snow way higher than the cars. I got a shovel from the super and younger bro and I dug out the pinto. We thought that was so much fun, we dug out a bunch of other people’s cars too.
@f00l and you survived, so the stupid didn’t really come into play!! I also remember, during the '78 blizzard, realizing that we had a lady governor. She looked so spectacular calling in the National Guard from the Armory and telling everyone to get off the roads.
@mikibell
The NYker locals near my place came out to watch me do the volunteer shoveling. I put on my best down home accent. They started by pointing and making fun, they ending by bringing me espresso and pitching in. And trying to pick me up.
He’s not a techie. Didn’t apply to MIT. He wound up in New Haven. : ). Econ and history I think. Some day I’ll have to ask him what he majored in. Whatever it was, he wasn’t a geek about it. He wanted a life in the normal biz world. Became a lawyer.
H wanted him tho.
More fun for me that he was in CT because he came into the city a bunch with his buddies.
@f00l The picture of MIT - that dragon - we built one that was 80’ long and higher than the second story of the dorm at the University of Rochester. Took all the snow on the residential quad and quite a bit off the frat quad (collected in garbage bags). Took all night. Wish I had a photo. It was spectacular.
Here’s a shot from the east coast storm of February 2003. Dropped about 20 inches with drifts over 30. It was my first winter in my new house and I was woefully unprepared. I’m more prepared now that I’ve let my son (in foreground) be 19 years old, and more than capable of helping me dig out of the mess tomorrow.
@f00l They do, but you have to stay in front of it. A few passes during the storm help significantly. If you let it go entirely, it’s too much to properly use them. Mine has a clearance of about 18" (TWSS) but I try to get out there before it’s a foot or so.
The winds might make this plan unworkable though, we’ll see.
To put this in historical context (especially for people who say the hype is big (hi @denboy)), this is supposed to be the worst March snowstorm for NYC since 1888 when there was a 21 inch snowfall.
@PlacidPenguin Neat, hope you’re part of history. I remember many a nor’easter with historical hype fizzling well under records. Hope this is one you can tell your kids, or other people’s kids about someday.
Pikers! The lot of you. Blizzard of 1966. 45 to 100 inches over 4 days in central New York. I was 7. Drifts up to second story windows. Google it if you’d like to see some pictures of real snow accumulation in a city. For us kids it was a wonderland. For our parents there wasn’t enough booze to make it through.
@sammydog01 Some of my earliest memories. Our street was one of the first to be plowed because my father was a doctor and local police chief lived next door. Chief brought Dad to and from the hospital in his patrol car for a few days. I thought that was so cool. A few days into the storm my mother sent my older sister and me to the store with our sleds to buy milk and bread for the neighborhood. We only made it a few blocks. Snow drifts were so high and we were so little that all our landmarks were obliterated. We had no idea were we where but finally made it back home.
I feel like I am an advertisement for meh… I have my halo lanterns all set, my panasonic chargers charging, my bubba mug filled with coffee, my down alternative blanket at the ready…sadly, no aa or aaa batteries at the ready… I am sure I have other meh stuff ready for the storm…too bad my purple meh mug was broken or that could be ready…@woodhouse (been a while since I bugged you…) or a meh sweatshirt would round out the readiness…
my simply stitched socks are warming near the stove…
@Barney good…it seems to be a good brand… @lisaviolet likes their craft glue too…that is why the kid used fabric glue…he grabbed the wrong bottle. I have one of the craft glues labeled telling him to keep his hands off, since he keeps leaving the cap off the one I lent to him. He didn’t know I had different types that look similar…
@Barney it is a little stringy, but use a small paper clip to open the top…and I just read to put vaseline on the tip to stop the stringiness… It also stops fraying…
@Barney he should know…pink tall bag is sewing, small pink/black bag is crafts…since that is how I refer to them so if he is gonna take my stuff, he should use his brain!
@mikibell Okay, I’ll give it a try. I guess it will probably work on little Lady’s eyeballs, too. Mom has been trying to pull them out – she gets fidgety if she wakes up in the middle of the night.
@woodhouse you can be the cool uncle… I think I am on the cool team for the first time in my life – not sure how that happened!!! My kids’ friends like me…
You are off the hook about the mug though – it seems my friends, @barney, @thumperchick and @humper conspired to provide me with an INTACT purple mug!!! Be that a lesson to your shipping department, that dunnage is important to shipping fragile (read that as fra-geee-lay)…
Thank you all, that was very sweet, but now I have nothing to bitch about!!! (I won’t cry, I won’t cry, nope, I won’t cry!!!)
@hanzov69 Yes that would have been fun. I know of a very long downhill in Fox Chapel that would give you quite the ride (and quite the hike back up the hill).
They cancelled the Blizzard warning in my area and again reduced the accumulation forecast, now 4-10". A far cry from the 24" predicted a few hours ago.
That said, it’s all freezing rain and sleet, so super-nasty and dangerous out there. And still the risk of high winds.
Wind is horrendous. Ok, sure. It’s not a tornado. However, the snow is blowing a lot. The blowing snow does look cool though.
There’s sleet mixed in with the snow, though before the snowfall ends tonight, it’ll change back into just sure, which means there’ll be a layer of ice to deal with.
You know what is weird about blizzard days?? It is sooo quiet outside. Yes, there is wind and snow, but no cars, no trucks, no school buses, no dogs. It is odd.
In Mount Vernon, there’s hail, and the reporter said it felt like hundreds of needles were pelting his neck and face.
As for no cars, no kidding, while they aren’t ticketing people for traveling, thankfully logic is prevailing.
DeBlasio is talking, and he gave numbers for how many trucks, plows, etc are in NYC, and how he’s happy people aren’t out since it’s making it easier to plow there (not that that affects me).
@narfcake Because it’s fun to watch them fight the elements. Reality TV. The ratings really go up if Jim Cantore is spotted nearby, because you know there will be disaster.
Ok cleared walk and drive. Another neighbor and I cleared walk and drive of my elderly neighbors. Tired debating a beer vs irish coffee as reward for hour and 20 min shoveling.
@PlacidPenguin Chilling just to look at that. Glad you found gloves. My grandma used to say that at least it insulates the (door or window) so the wind can’t come through the cracks. Take care of yourself.
@Barney
I thought there were only three conspirators at the time. @PlacidPenguin won’t tell me who the fourth one is either. I have some suspicions, but they are nothing but guesses.
@PlacidPenguin
That I’m insulting everyone and everything.
PS OZ is a serious fav place. When I was four years old I had all the first 14 books memorized. My parents would make deliberate errors reading the books to test. I always caught the errors.
I hate snow… I hate everything related to snow… I hate being wet… I hate not being able to breathe in the cold… grrrrrr one angry breathless goat here… Broke the damn shovel, so I walked to my parents house to borrow theirs. Can’t leave them snowed in, so shoveled most of their driveway. Have to go back and clean off the car and get that last packed snow at the end. Had to clean out their fire hydrant too.
AND my parents had pecan sandies on the kitchen table, and I didn’t want to find out I am allergic to those… hate nut allergies too!!!
Walking home, fell on my ass – thankfully, it is well padded!!! (still hurt though)… That last hill really killed me. I still have to go and shovel out my car so I can return the shovel and finish their driveway… hate snow…
OMG… I love my neighbors… I think I have to replace my dad’s shovel!!! I swear we have 3 feet of snow… I got through the ice packed 12 inches… and was just looking at the never diminishing pile thinking, I am going to die out here!!!
Then, my neighbor had a plow come and do her driveway/front area, so I went over to help her get the heavy shit out to be plowed. Damn is it heavy snow.
I didn’t realize the plow was her husband, I figured it was someone they paid to plow. I wasn’t going to ask for help at all, because that is money I just don’t have right now. Turns out it was her husband and he borrowed the truck from work… he got all that nasty hardpacked snow out from in front of my driveway AND gave me a place to park once I get the car out… I may just do a @barney and cry… I still hate snow, but I love my neighbors!!!
Hmmm and I found a package from NY on my front step, marked fragile — wonder what that is @thumperchick!! Once I can breathe again, I will open it!
@f00l done… finally done, all cars freed… parents’ house had been finished by their neighbor, who then plowed in the hydrant that I cleared… they also re-cleared the hydrant…
We’re finally making some progress shoveling all the snow too.
I thought I was gonna have a heart attack there.
Soon it will be passable for short distances if I’m really careful and go slow.
It’s tough, shoveling in sandals and short sleeves like that. And I gotta wear sunscreen of course. Some poor people are having to do it barefooted. They must be acclimated. They seem to be enjoying it.
@PlacidPenguin the car is freed… the help of the neighbor allowed me to shovel a dent next to the door, and I shoveled the two feet more to the car, and I drove it out… Still not uncovered, but I am done… (I kinda scratched the windshield with the metal shovel… oooppps, don’t do that!!)
@f00l not liking you… and I don’t normally whine… this full time job crap sucks – who’s idea was it for my husband to work steadily so we can pay bills???
Part of my whining I just figured out is that I haven’t eaten today … going to make lunch!!!
@f00l still have to go finish the parents’ driveway, but after I eat. Oh, and replace their shovel too… it was nice and flat, it is now a strange v shaped (good thing they love me!!)
Plastic shovel here. Slight crack in it from a different snowfall. It may be plastic, but it’s still good.
The hard snow made things slightly easier for me. I dug underneath the hard snow, tossed the snow aside, put the shovel under the hard snow, and lifted it.
I’d get my car out and move it to the driveway, but there was a different car there, so plowing wasn’t fully great.
Despite it being a long driveway, it’s also narrow now because of the snow.
So… I’m stuck keeping my car on the lawn for now.
@PlacidPenguin the first shovel I broke was plastic… should have duct taped it, but it was too dark to identify the problem last night. Was worth the trek to get the metal shovel.
@f00l umm don’t think so (get staked too). I am not flaunting that I live in the south… instead I have been helpfully posting really deep snow pics so those in the current storm know it could be worse… because I know just how much better that will make them feel (insert evil grin here - oh wait this might be a stakeable offense too - past the 5 min edit time to remove those. Opps).
So congratulations. Now those people who got snow this week will not only be thinking about their current predicament, but also about how other places have gotten more snow in the past.
Still better than insulting Kansas.
I should point out though that March is almost halfway done, and you’ve never been goat yet…
@PlacidPenguin Pffff … sounds like a personal vendetta problem to me : )
PS better re-read the past couple of goat nomination threads and see whose names were put up, how many votes they got (or didn’t) and what promises were made there
@f00l Spent over an hour this afternoon covering up all the tender plants and blooms which have popped over the last ten days in anticipation of tonight’s freeze. The gusty winds were NOT a help. I was dithering about doing it at all, but Himself rolled in early from work swearing it was going to go down into the mid twenties for us tonight and stay there for several hours. Glad we’ve gotten it finished early while it’s still sorta kinda warmish in the sunshine because my Viking blood has really thinned out over the years. Don’t miss those freezing cold temperatures at all!
@OldCatLady …You have access to calamansi??? Oh my god. If there is anything I miss about where I lived in Florida, it is easy access to calamansi, the Best Citrus.
@Kawa I have one in my front yard. Occasionally I make a batch of marmalade. Maybe later this week, if it stays cool. At the moment everybody is desperately trying to give away bags of grapefruit.
@f00l Probably still use pots? I think most of the orange groves are 150+ miles south of us.
I’m hoping my strawberries hold up. They’re well covered and are an absolute fluke they’re growing. Bot a strawberry planter complete with plants last fall. Got three tiny berries and then I thought the thing was all but dead since it had about 7 leaves. Suddenly, last month it took off like gangbusters and has been putting out quite a bit of fruit already.
@CaptAmehrican@Kawa Move (back) to Florida. This time of year, people leave bags of citrus on friends’ doorknobs, because there is no possible way to eat all the stuff that comes ripe at the same time. Even with one tree of each kind, we’re drowning in the stuff. It’s been too warm to even think about making preserves all fall and winter.
@OldCatLady I left for a reason, honestly; I love walking through NYC, not triggering my driving phobia by using public transit, finding weird art, and watching weird theater, none of which were accessible in Florida. It’s also much easier for me to find people worth dating that’ll agree to my kind of weirdness.
But god, I miss the citrus so badly. It was my favorite fruit even before I moved to Florida, and then I was horribly spoiled by how great the citrus is down there. Harvey’s Groves in Brevard was my go-to; they sold juice, jams, and citrus that wasn’t pretty enough for shipping boxes to the locals in these seasonally-open stores, and it was just amazing. They never had calamansi marmalade though!!
I really will pay for a box full of grapefruit now, and maybe calamansi marmalade later. I had a calamansi tree in my yard in Florida, and it was my favorite to put on everything, but I never learned to can; the instant you mentioned it I was full of that one specific regret.
@Kawa You can order grapefruit from ‘Indian River’ region growers, but if I put up a batch of calamondin marmalade, I’ll let you know. I’m leaning toward using the refrigerator method. Pressure or hot water canning requires organization- and cooler weather. It’s going back to 80 next week. Local churches and homeless shelters have boxes of donated citrus sitting around. Very few homeless people possess juicers, so grapefruit aren’t popular, but oranges etc. get some takers.
@f00l It would make me look like such a tourist, but man, a “I FL” enamel pin would be so good. Maybe I’ll pick one up next time I visit.
Museum of Holography in Soho is no more, but across the East River in Queens there is the Center for the Holographic Arts: http://holocenter.org/ I haven’t been, but I should.
Yeah, I know grapefruit can be professionally shipped; Harvey’s Groves, as I mentioned does it. Not Rio Grande, but other grapefruit, and other citrus including Honeybells: http://www.harveysgroves.com/
I mostly meant my offer as a “I volunteer to consume the fruit you can’t give away!” thing.
@OldCatLady we lost a grapefruit tree years ago because of a citrus canker infected tree within however many miles. The government came and removed it to help stop any spread. What a bummer. It was rampant at the time. I remember them thinking that Florida would lose all of its citrus.
Where I live now, I have oaks and palms. Wish I had citrus trees. These trees have been here for a really long time, so I wouldn’t get rid of them. I can drive to orange groves in about ten minutes though. There used to be a local market that would sell oranges and grapefruit ten for $1. I miss that so much.
@f00l Sorry – my email in-box and I are in a love-hate relationship, and I didn’t visit it yesterday.
We had no snow whatsoever. The lowest temp recorded here over the last couple of days was 39, which is chillier than usual for late March.
We actually haven’t had snow here since 1989, when about 2" fell just a couple of days before Christmas. I know that doesn’t sound like much to any [cough] Yankee folks used to 24" but southern cities don’t have snow plows, snow tires, snow shovels, or even snow clothing. We had a couple of days of rain and sleet, and the snow arrived on the 23rd. Kids were ecstatic, parents were crazed, schools and most malls and stores had to close.
The city is bisected by a river, and residents rely heavily on four bridges to commute. Police shut down the bridges for safety purposes. My front porch screen door froze shut, and my two small poodles tried desperately to put no more than one foot at a time into horrible awful white stuff. Two cars slid off the street in front of my house and landed in drainage ditches.
For one person’s view of the snowfall, you can enjoy kid’s delight here:
@PlacidPenguin@snapster better question is how do you choose between the two different color options… drats on morningsave… it is another money draining endeavor!!! (from my bank account to his!!!)
@connorbush I was in a 25 car pile up some years ago in a blizzard. I managed to stop in time as I was going a sane speed in the slow lane. Unfortunately people behind me were not and I was hit multiple times and finally shoved into a stack of cars (hit by a taxi who was hit by a honda civic who was hit by an 18 wheeler… you get the picture). Car was totaled I had bumps and bruises.
@PlacidPenguin If I can find it again there is someone “plowing” their driveway with a dog in a remote control construction plow toy… maybe go buy one of those? I have a snow blower for sale… not that I can sell it in MS, had it from when I lived in northern ID and forgot to sell it before I moved. Pay the postage and boxing up and it is yours.
@mikibell I’m really not sure. They’re from one of the gardens in DC that I regularly stroll through, so hopefully there’s some budget being allotted to replanting them if they don’t survive. Sigh.
I have no need to parallel park where I live. The few times where I even get close to having to parallel park, it’s usually one of two or three empty spots, so parking is simple.
Meanwhile, I blame you for the fact that I wasted time relocating my car for snow which didn’t even stick.
I had ice cream for breakfast.
@narfcake
What flavor?
@PlacidPenguin Tillamook French vanilla. I don’t buy the “fun” kind:
I don’t like snow, so what do you think?
@PlacidPenguin
/image summer penguin
@PlacidPenguin you fail penguin
@CaptAmehrican
/giphy fail penguin
@narfcake
/giphy penguin fall
@CaptAmehrican @f00l @narfcake
Y’all are misinterpreting what “penguin fail” really means.
Totally irrelevant, but I’m not always going to explain what I mean. It’s less fun if I give explanations.
@PlacidPenguin
/giphy CAN YOU READ?
/giphy PENGUIN FALL
@f00l
I’m well aware what you typed.
@PlacidPenguin
I Maid What I Seant And I Seant What I Maid!
We bought milk, eggs and bread on Thursday…and hubs got a propane tank filled…everything else…eh…Two days indoors with the kids might kill me!
@mikibell hey it is st patricks this week what you need is jamisons for irish coffee for adults and fluff for hot chocolates for kids
Lucky timing for me. Have to go to an interview Monday, getting car fixed up Thursday. My snowmen are melted from warm weather a couple weeks ago, and I’m ready to build more.
Aaaaaaaaa I’m in Boston! What’s going to happen to me?!
@katylava
Original name. There used to be a Mediocre employee with your name. (I’m assuming she changed her name, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to have it)
Personally, I believe you’ll probably succumb to being in Boston before the weather affects you.
@PlacidPenguin
I thought that employee was now called K@atylava?
@katylava You’ll get snowed on?
@katylava I imagine the residents will treat it as no big deal, while you’ll be fairly astonished at the amount of snow that fell that no one really gives much thought to. Maybe @jbartus can chime in here?
@katylava you’ll work from home
@katylava Get used to 1" of snow is no big deal (unlike Dallas where that would be the media event of the year) - like seriously you consider that snow? Now 1’ in 12-24 hours people might start to complain… BUT Boston has plenty of snow plows, salt and experience both clearing streets and driving in that shit (if you do not have experience driving in that crap go to a mall parking lot when it is closed with a bunch of snow and make yourself skid and get out of it).
New windshield wipers though would be prudent (streaked windshields from slush kicked up on your windshield is a PITA), and making sure your washer fluid reservoirs are full plus carry a gallon in your car in the winter to fill it up if need be while out driving. And have a decent snow brush and scraper. And something to thaw the key hole if necessary in cause the lock is frozen and you need to thaw it via the keyhole (no you do not need a propane torch - that is over kill although I will admit to having used one. Once. Carefully though so as not to singe the paint. They do make a small battery operated little thingy you put in there and magic it is thawed.
@Kidsandliz I’m only here for the week… More concerned about not being able to physically handle the cold, because, you know, i live in Texas.
@katylava HAT!! mittens, socks (and preferably boots so you don’t get wet feet - if you have to walk long distances through slush putting your feet in plastic bags and then put your shoes on helps keep your feet dry, although your shoes will still get wet), layers since it probably isn’t worth buying a winter jacket (and a sweater that covers your butt helps - so you will look silly outside - so what… you can take most of it off when you go inside). If it is windy a windbreaker, preferably on the outside so you don’t feel the wind all the way to your skin.
@katylava
Walmart or similar, if you can get to one. They still outta have stuff in stock.
@katylava There’s supposed to be 40-60 mph gusts and whiteout conditions. Just stay inside if you can.
@katylava You’re doomed.
Good news - no more winter storm watch.
Bad news - winter storm warning now in effect. 12 - 18 inches of snow predicted.
GAH!!!
I blame @mikibell
@PlacidPenguin in it to win it! Right along with you!
@mikibell
Ugh.
They just said that my general area could get 18 - 24 inches.
@PlacidPenguin So get out the sleds, cross country skis and go have fun.
@Kidsandliz
I’ve never skied. Don’t have skis.
I have a sled somewhere though.
Ugh. There’s a sled somewhere.
Send your snow to Florida please.
@RiotDemon Yeah, it’s like 80 here.
@RiotDemon @moondrake It’s 90 here.
@narfcake
HISS
@PlacidPenguin
/giphy i’m melting melting
@narfcake
/image California polar bear
@PlacidPenguin
/image California penguin
@PlacidPenguin It’s almost 9pm and it’s still 73. Grrrrr.
@narfcake
I could mail you some snow.
(Of course though, I’d have to use a fake return address.)
@PlacidPenguin be sure to send it next day delivery packed in enough dry ice. LOL
@Kidsandliz @PlacidPenguin
The snow & wind is coming.
Buy beer now or you may run out.
All I wanted is some yogurt and stuff to take for lunch this week. Had to suffer through the idiots buying food for the next month at the market. I seriously hope all their power goes off and everything they just bought spoils. I’ll be headed to work Tuesday regardless of the snow. The idiot drivers bother me but the snow doesn’t.
Why do people crave french toast during snow??? Everyone buys bread milk eggs ie making french toast
@CaptAmehrican
I know Weather.com is a bit off from time to time, but seriously? I checked the weather in Fort Lauderdale at 7:15 their time and got this:
Looks like for some reason it’s giving the data in celsius. But it gave me a “huh?” moment.
@moondrake are you in Florida yet?
@RiotDemon Coupla days. We were wondering about rain, so I was looking at the weather service.
Seems I am on the cut-off for rain/snow on the eastern shore of MD. We have predictions of rain only Tues/Wed. We will see. Never trust weatherpersons - unless they are hot.
But if I lived in Philly, I would always trust Sheena Parveen (even her name is hot)
@mfladd
Why would you subject yourself to Philly though?
@mfladd We are also in the rain/sleet/slush/snow mix area. I’m pretty sure the kids aren’t missing school.
@mfladd http://www.footsforecast.org/2017/03/something-wicked-this-way-comes.html?m=1
Foots forcast is usually very accurate and looking a bit worse
@PlacidPenguin I love visiting Philly. My work HQ is around that area, and I did a lot of training with a previous company steps from Rocky. But no, I am way past living in any major city.
@CaptAmehrican That map still had me in rain. The ES is weird. Baltimore can be bombarded with snow 2 hrs away, and then we will barely get any. Has something to do with us basically being an island.
@mfladd Sheena Parveen left Philly. She’s now working closer to you in D.C. Fun fact: She was dating Scott Hartnell (Predators/Flyers/Blue Jackets) who was dating a girl I know but left her for Sheena. As for current Philly meteorologists, Cecily Tynan is still my favorite. Still smoking hot at 47.
@mfladd Btw, while Cecily is the hottest doing the weather, the absolute hottest woman on Philly news right now is the traffic gal on CBS 3 in the morning - Meisha Johnson.
@cinoclav Haha…I was actually thinking of you (being in philly, not the “there is nothing wrong with that” way) when I wrote that. Funny, we had a super adorable weather girl here on the shore and then she left for D.C., to my great sadness.
Eileen Whelan
And yes, Cecily has it goin on.
@mfladd Yeah, she’s pretty damn adorable too. Many years ago I was a manager for Herman’s Sporting Good’s. I worked at a store right up the street from a couple of the tv stations. I’d always run into Cecily in the morning as her and her crew got coffee and bagels at the shop next to my store. She’s without a doubt one of the nicest news persons I’ve ever had the pleasure of chatting with.
@mfladd Yeah, I think the Bay absorbs the energy of the storm. Something about the water being unseasonably warm, so it’ll cut you off.
I’m just south of BWI, so it’s gonna be interesting!
@mfladd - Too bad you’re not in the pretty purple snow zone. I’d be down with purple snow.
@KDemo @mfladd
Sigh…
I’m in the dark purple.
Why I’m still glad to be retired AND living in FL. My previous office is holding a conference in DC, starting tomorrow. People from out of the area are horrified to find things like: http://wtop.com/sprawl-crawl/2017/03/metroaccess-service-suspended-due-to-storm/
Be prepared.
@heartny
@heartny Looks like we are in the 15 bottle band.
@baqui63 Yep. I had better stock up tomorrow. I still have 1-1/2 bottles left of Meh wine, which should get me through the first hour or so.
Love snow. I hope we get two feet of it (Maryland). Supposed to get 12" to 18"
@jewelshound Here’s 2 feet of snow for you.
snowmageddon really? Unless it’s 2 or more feet expected it isn’t a snowmageddon. It’s just a regular snow.
@Brooklyn11218 Most resent forecast I say just changed from 18’’ to 2’.
@givemeyoursoul
I would resent that forecast 2.
@f00l
@Brooklyn11218 I rate snow by how high it gets on my 4x4. If it starts interfering with the axle and suspension parts, it’s a challenging drive. If it’s over the bumper, it’s a snowmageddon. When we had our 4’ snowmageddon here in Maryland, my wife and I had been dutifully shoveling off the driveway periodically, only to gradually realize we were just trapping my truck in the bottom of a box. When the snow plows came they added another two feet plus of ice to the box. Doh!
You know what I say to your snow? Meh.
I had just moved to NYC when a big storm came along and shut everything down from Washington thru Boston and parts in between and inland.
The plows hit the city streets and left behind snowpiles well over 8" high. Alternate side of the street parking rules were suspended for months, it took till April for the last snowpiles to melt.
Of course, in Manhattan, you’re not really inconvenienced to the degree that you would be elsewhere. Everything you want - which is to say food, alcohol, music, and movies - is open by the 2nd day.
I was young. I was stupid. It was great.
@f00l 1978?
@jbartus
Yes.
@f00l I rememberate that storm (was in HS)… also early 1994 was pretty bad.
This storm turned out to be a pita not due to depth (was maybe six inches total) but due to ice content. My car is still buried, tho that’s because I’ve not needed to move it since Tuesday and was away until this evening… I was going to back it out of its “cave” this evening (I can get in from sidewalk side), but the woman whose driveway is immediately behind me got home between the time I checked that she still hadn’t and I got my jacket on and walked outside… I’d have asked her if I could get my car out, but her kid was asleep in the carseat and she clearly didn’t want to wake her up). I don’t need to move it until Tuesday morning for work, so I’ll probably back it out tomorrow.
What is this thing called snow of which you speaketh? We haven’t had much this season and because of little moisture, our state has experienced massive wildfires. We’ve had over 750,000 acres burn so far.
@Barney
You had winter wildfires? Due to drought and wind?
@f00l Yep. It’s been a little nasty in places. I guess the closest to us was about 60 miles away, but the smoke was overpowering here.
I can’t even begin to explain how miserable this is going to be. I live in one of the snowiest cities in the northeast but went to a destination wedding in Key West over the weekend. Plan was to drive home, show my daughters some parts of the Eastern Seaboard they have never seen, stop in Arlington and see my grandson (maybe acknowledge his parents too) and then head for home in Upstate NY. Just pulled into Savannah. Knowing that I am driving into a winter storm in a part of the country that has no clue how to deal with it is keeping me awake. Not to mention that my wife is worried that she is going to miss a conference in NYC because downstate NY can’t handle snow any better than Washington DC can. Good lord, when I woke up yesterday it was sunny and 75 degrees. Should have stayed in the Keys until May. Wow. I’ve become that cranky old guy.
@Frcal I grew up in Rochester. I think we had two snow days my entire childhood. Central Virginia has at least a week every year.
@sammydog01 Exactly. All of us who live along the upstate Thruway corridor - Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany - just take quick snow removal and winter driving tactics for granted.
@Frcal @sammydog01 I agree. I drove that regularly when in college (Rochester) and home (NE Ohio snow belt). I think school closed maybe twice K-12 and through 4 years of college. Snow up to the bottom of the car doors overnight was not uncommon. I rode my bicycle to high school in the snow on a regular basis because I lived fourish houses too close to be able to take the bus (had to live 2 miles from school). That being said I had to be careful not to skid and have my bike fall over going down the hill with the traffic light on the bottom if I needed to stop.
18-24" expected where I live.
@hems79 Same – they updated the Philly area from 8-18 to 18-24. Damn.
@hems79
/youtube Jim Carrey Imposter
That panda gif has done more crunches in eight seconds than I’ve done in eight months.
/giphy no abs
Inch of snow yesterday that was gone by 1pm. No more snow for me.
@cranky1950 We might be getting two feet where I am. Your comment made me cranky.
@hems79 This pic bears repeating:
/image 2 feet of snow
@hems79 That’s me- anything I can do to help. Enjoy your snow day.
I don’t get the hype here. I lived in New Hampshire for 24 years and expected snow storms in March as much as December. I always expected one last one in April too. It’s just a snowstorm in a colder region during winter people.
@denboy
I don’t like snow.
Or the cold.
@PlacidPenguin I’m not a fan of them either but that’s not what I’m judging here. I’m judging the hype around such a normal winter event…whether desired or not.
@denboy
My intent was to convey that I don’t like the snow, so I’m annoyed when any snow is called for. Especially when it’s 18"-24" as per a map in this thread.
@denboy see the thing is this is not a normal march event. We have had less then 1 inch all winter and are due for 12. So imagine 12 times more snow then all year. Yeah that.
@CaptAmehrican Seems perfectly normal to me to get a snowstorm in March (still winter), in the northeast. Using Boston averages, March averages just 1" less per year of snow than December. This one looks big, which is noteworthy, just seems overhyped to me.
@denboy
Keep in mind that Winter has been fairly warm the last few years, with some places not getting any major amounts of snow. (Over a foot in this case.)
To suddenly find out there’s going to be heavy snowfall with blizzard conditions…
@denboy I think it’s the wind that makes this one special. The snowfall doesn’t look out of line. Flood potential along the coast too.
@sammydog01 @denboy
Yep. They’re saying blizzard conditions (with regards to wind).
@denboy totally agree with you… although it makes me snicker, because a friend who recently moved to this country was like “oh, so winter is over” when we hit 60 degrees a couple of times now. I laughed and told him, noooo, be prepared for snow all the way until May. He REALLY thought I was joking.
@PlacidPenguin Gotcha. I remember experiencing a mix of milder and snow filled winters but a streak of mild winters probably would’ve adjusted my expectations there
@denboy it was 71 degrees a few weeks ago – in the back of everyones mind they knew winter wasn’t over. Now, it’s being realized and we are all giddy.
No snow here, just a 100% chance of a blizzard of criminals and gangsters and total f’ing losers stealing other peoples cars and breaking into their houses and ripping off trailers from innocent people who thought it would be a good idea to stop at a hotel overnight in the city I live. Shooting people and car jacking and stabbings and domestic violence SWAT responses fueled by drugs and alcohol induced rage. Drug overdoses and rape and children being abused and molested. Expecting a blanket of used hypodermic needles from Heroin junkies in the parks today. But, the weather looks good. Mid to upper 70’s all week bumping into 80 by the weekend. With plenty of blue skies, puffy clouds, and bright sunshine every day.
Anyone care to guess where I live?
@accelerator
A place where people on the internet glare at you when you mention the weather?
@accelerator Sounds like some parts of my stomping grounds. Southern California? orrr Chicago. edit. Scratch the Southern California… we were 90’s this weekend.
Snowstorm of 1978
This was the storm that hit shortly after I arrived in Manhattan.
Just as the storm began, my younger brother flew into NYC. He had applied as an xfer student to a bunch of famous name schools in Boston and CT and other NE states. The plan was that he would take my car and go to all his campus visits and interviews.
Only the roads were closed. All of them. The Massachusetts State Police had threatened to arrest anyone driving in anything other than four-wheel drive vehicle or snowmobile, and had asked even the four-wheelers to stay off the streets except for emergencies.
The car my brother was planning to borrow for this excursion was a Ford Pinto. For extra safety. So of course, he decided to go. He just waited for news that the snowplows were out.
The snow did pack down well, and did not turn immediately to ice. He crept along at about 15-20 mph and managed to get to the first campus - snow was still coming down. The campus was closed, except for admin offices. They were astonished to see him, but the place they had for him to stay was available. They called in a couple of profs who lived on campus to do the interviews. They warned him it was a bad idea to proceed onward to Mass and offered to put him up for a few days.
Younger brother, being optimistic, decided to go on toward Boston. So what if there was a “shoot on sight” warning from the State Police for anyone on the turnpike or interstates? So what if all but emergency businesses were closed by government order?
So he proceeded onwards. In the fab Pinto. That had TX plates. (Plows had been out, but snow was still falling hard). Shortly after he crossed the Mass state line, a cop pulled him over. So younger bro put on his best “idiot Texan” persona and pulled out his interview paperwork from Famous School. In the heaviest yokel accent he could manage, he went on about how he’d never seen so much snow, wow, could the nice policeman please tell him if he was going the right way to get to his interview? The cop shook his head, told him he might get arrested or have the car impounded, and it was his risk. And pointed him down the road.
This happened twice more. The second time, it was on the outskirts to Boston, a state cop heard his wide-eyed, heavily over-accented, new-to-all-this story, how he’d managed to get all the way from Manhattan, looked at his paperwork, and said “I know you’re putting me on, but I like you. I’ll get you to the campus. I bet they admit you just because you showed up.”
And the cop escorted him to campus and found him an illegal parking space. The cop said, “They won’t tow you for a few days, they have too much else to do. Make sure you’ve moved the vehicle by the time the businesses re-open”.
So younger bro went wandering around campus and found an admin building with somebody in it, who called somebody else, who took him to admissions. A few people who worked there lived on or right by campus and had come in, and he said they were in shock to see him. Again, they called a prof who lived on campus to come interview him, since most staff was at home. They made him hot tea and fed him. The next day, they wanted him to come back in for another go-round, he was considered such a curiosity, more on-campus staff came in to look at the idiot Texan who made it thru the storm and the closed roads.
My younger brother can be very charming. His other interviews were a bit less story-worthy, but he got into every university he applied to. The two universities he interviewed at during the worst of the storm both later called trying to get him to enroll. He did choose one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978
MIT was closed. The students kept busy.
@f00l What I recall of that blizzard was that I couldn’t walk in the snow, even following my father’s footsteps! They had to assign me my own “big kid” to help me off the bus because the snow was so much taller than I was!! (I was second to the shortest in my kindergarten class, and 11th from the tallest in my high school class, including the guys – I grew somewhere in between
)
@f00l Blizzardd of’78 was awesome. The sad thing is we were off school for less time then my kids when we have 6 inches of snow on the Eastern Shore.
@mfladd
@mikibell
I’d never had to dig out a car before.
Of course, the plows dumped snow way higher than the cars. I got a shovel from the super and younger bro and I dug out the pinto. We thought that was so much fun, we dug out a bunch of other people’s cars too.
Young. Stupid. There are worse things to be. ; )
@f00l and you survived, so the stupid didn’t really come into play!! I also remember, during the '78 blizzard, realizing that we had a lady governor. She looked so spectacular calling in the National Guard from the Armory and telling everyone to get off the roads.
@mikibell
The NYker locals near my place came out to watch me do the volunteer shoveling. I put on my best down home accent. They started by pointing and making fun, they ending by bringing me espresso and pitching in. And trying to pick me up.
@f00l Did he wind up at MIT? I was class of '83. Just missed that storm.
@sammydog01
He’s not a techie. Didn’t apply to MIT. He wound up in New Haven. : ). Econ and history I think. Some day I’ll have to ask him what he majored in. Whatever it was, he wasn’t a geek about it. He wanted a life in the normal biz world. Became a lawyer.
H wanted him tho.
More fun for me that he was in CT because he came into the city a bunch with his buddies.
What was your major at MIT?
@f00l He interviewed at the finest university in Harvard Square? Awesome. He made the right choice. I majored in chemistry.
@f00l I regret that I could only star your story once. That was
insanitybeautiful.@narfcake
My brother married an Irish girl so that he could replenish the Luck 'o the Irish.
On their honeymoon, they went to Ireland. He kissed the Blarney Stone so he could also replenish the Stone’s powers.
Both times it worked.
@sammydog01
Did you get grad ed? Are you still a mad chemist?
Younger bro has gotten a buncha opportunities just because of the name on his undergrad diploma.
@f00l The picture of MIT - that dragon - we built one that was 80’ long and higher than the second story of the dorm at the University of Rochester. Took all the snow on the residential quad and quite a bit off the frat quad (collected in garbage bags). Took all night. Wish I had a photo. It was spectacular.
Here’s a shot from the east coast storm of February 2003. Dropped about 20 inches with drifts over 30. It was my first winter in my new house and I was woefully unprepared. I’m more prepared now that I’ve let my son (in foreground) be 19 years old, and more than capable of helping me dig out of the mess tomorrow.
@ACraigL That blizzard I missed, I was in the hospital for a week. I remember looking out the window and thinking, wow…
Is this the thread where I can request my very own panda?
I would like one panda please.
@conandlibrarian
/giphy panda attack
@conandlibrarian
@conandlibrarian no but we have an @placidpenguin you can have
@PlacidPenguin
@CaptAmehrican
@conandlibrarian @ACraigL @PlacidPenguin
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/pandemonium
(Hi, @no1!)
@narfcake @no1 I love that design.
@narfcake
I might have to buy that shirt.
@conandlibrarian You can only request a real panda from China or Taiwan… the rest are on lease
@mikibell That’s a lie!
/image Fiat Panda
/image Fiat Panda 2
/image Fiat Panda 3
@narfcake yes, but I thought only the cake was a lie?
@narfcake I have the design in three different sizes, it is one of my favorites.
@mikibell It is.
/image the cake is a lie
@narfcake
That would have made an interesting Twilight Zone episode.
Pseudorandom video:
@conandlibrarian Mine too. Also, you wrote this before.
@PlacidPenguin It makes for an even better video game.
/google Portal the cake is a lie
The Cake Is a Lie | Know Your Meme
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-cake-is-a-lie
@ACraigL @narfcake thanks for the kind comments. seems like a lifetime ago. still haven’t met any wearers irl.
/giphy wonderful penguin
@PlacidPenguin don’t worry I am just joking.
@CaptAmehrican
@conandlibrarian I think it’s /buy
Here is the worst from the 2014 storms in Boston.
Had to dig a trench to the mail box, and for a second escape route.
Do snow blowers work on these snows? Am currently hard-line opposed to doing physical labor.
@f00l They do, but you have to stay in front of it. A few passes during the storm help significantly. If you let it go entirely, it’s too much to properly use them. Mine has a clearance of about 18" (TWSS) but I try to get out there before it’s a foot or so.
The winds might make this plan unworkable though, we’ll see.
Our schools have informed us they are closed tomorrow – I cannot fathom why!!!
@mikibell
Certain places near me rarely close. This morning they were already announcing that they were closing tomorrow.
One of them is a college. This week they’re having Spring Break. Kinda pointless to announce that they’re closed tomorrow.
@PlacidPenguin except for admin people who still have to go to work…
To put this in historical context (especially for people who say the hype is big (hi @denboy)), this is supposed to be the worst March snowstorm for NYC since 1888 when there was a 21 inch snowfall.
http://www.amny.com/news/nyc-blizzards-five-worst-march-snowstorms-to-hit-the-city-according-to-nws-1.13247596
@PlacidPenguin Neat, hope you’re part of history. I remember many a nor’easter with historical hype fizzling well under records. Hope this is one you can tell your kids, or other people’s kids about someday.
@denboy You’re such a caring guy.
@denboy FWIW they’ve updated my area’s forecast from 18-24" to 12-16". Still a lot, but that’s quite a downgrade.
@denboy
It’s NY. There are already things to tell my kids/the kids of other people.
On the bright side, better to have stories about the weather than terrorist attacks (not that I remember the 1993 WTC bombings).
(Keep in mind that I’m still relatively young.)
@ACraigL
I personally think that a downgrade is when they predict more snow.
@PlacidPenguin - You have kids??
@KDemo
No. (It’s how I’m sane).
Nobody knows what the future will bring though.
@Barney thanks, I do care quite a bit about myself
@PlacidPenguin ah, the world is your oyster youngster
@denboy I blame Jim Cantore.
Pikers! The lot of you. Blizzard of 1966. 45 to 100 inches over 4 days in central New York. I was 7. Drifts up to second story windows. Google it if you’d like to see some pictures of real snow accumulation in a city. For us kids it was a wonderland. For our parents there wasn’t enough booze to make it through.
@Frcal 30 inches where I lived. I was 5 and don’t remember it.
@sammydog01 Some of my earliest memories. Our street was one of the first to be plowed because my father was a doctor and local police chief lived next door. Chief brought Dad to and from the hospital in his patrol car for a few days. I thought that was so cool. A few days into the storm my mother sent my older sister and me to the store with our sleds to buy milk and bread for the neighborhood. We only made it a few blocks. Snow drifts were so high and we were so little that all our landmarks were obliterated. We had no idea were we where but finally made it back home.
2:
PS that ice encased home was taken today in NY. Yikes!
I feel like I am an advertisement for meh… I have my halo lanterns all set, my panasonic chargers charging, my bubba mug filled with coffee, my down alternative blanket at the ready…sadly, no aa or aaa batteries at the ready… I am sure I have other meh stuff ready for the storm…too bad my purple meh mug was broken or that could be ready…
@woodhouse (been a while since I bugged you…) or a meh sweatshirt would round out the readiness…
my simply stitched socks are warming near the stove…
Send in the clowns…errr
…
@mikibell
Want a purple Meh mug?
@PlacidPenguin Um, I really don’t think a goat needs one.
@PlacidPenguin thank you…it is kind of you to offer, but my son reassembled mine…with fabric glue!
@Barney
Should I have offered @mikibell a purple bowl?
@mikibell Is fabric glue really that strong? I’m thinking of using it on Mom’s little Lady dog.
@Barney no…you are right…I don’t need one, but it is fun to yank @woodhouse’s chain…was he even here for the fuko?
@PlacidPenguin Slurp. Slurp.
@Barney depends on the glue and the fabric…lady is wool, right?
I would confidently use this:
@mikibell Yanking the wrong person’s chain can get get you into a lot of trouble.
@mikibell Yep, wool.
@mikibell That’s the glue I have!
@mikibell Mom keeps pulling the stitching out of Lady’s large spots. A friend suggested I use this glue.
@Barney yeah…he keeps making you cry…shame on him!
@mikibell Anything can make me cry right now. I think I’ve been saving up the tears for a very long time.
@mikibell @Barney
@woodhouse has been a mehmber since 2/16/2016.
@mikibell I understand that glue is a little difficult to work with?
@Barney good…it seems to be a good brand… @lisaviolet likes their craft glue too…that is why the kid used fabric glue…he grabbed the wrong bottle. I have one of the craft glues labeled telling him to keep his hands off, since he keeps leaving the cap off the one I lent to him. He didn’t know I had different types that look similar…
@Barney it is a little stringy, but use a small paper clip to open the top…and I just read to put vaseline on the tip to stop the stringiness… It also stops fraying…
@mikibell I never read labels either.
Edit: Or directions.
@Barney he should know…pink tall bag is sewing, small pink/black bag is crafts…since that is how I refer to them
so if he is gonna take my stuff, he should use his brain!
@Barney your real name must be Joey!
@PlacidPenguin I meant as an employee…
@mikibell Okay, I’ll give it a try. I guess it will probably work on little Lady’s eyeballs, too. Mom has been trying to pull them out – she gets fidgety if she wakes up in the middle of the night.
@mikibell Your son’s name?
@mikibell
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lately it’s been a bit hard to keep track of the status of Mehmployees.
@PlacidPenguin Yep, Meh needs to hand out scorecards.
@Barney yup… I keep telling…if only he would use his powers for good…or homework…
@mikibell Aww… I’m not THAT bad.
@Barney nor is he…he is my
@mikibell Wish I could give you more stars.
@Barney
@mikibell A mehtshirt?
@woodhouse sweatshirt
… we haven’t gotten those yet … I am just teasing you, welcome to the family! It is like have a gazillion evil cousins!
@mikibell I thought I was the cool uncle!
@woodhouse You didn’t look, in that photo of you, to be ancient enough to be an uncle of @mikibell’s LOL
@woodhouse you can be the cool uncle… I think I am on the cool team for the first time in my life – not sure how that happened!!! My kids’ friends like me…
You are off the hook about the mug though – it seems my friends, @barney, @thumperchick and @humper conspired to provide me with an INTACT purple mug!!! Be that a lesson to your shipping department, that dunnage is important to shipping fragile (read that as fra-geee-lay)…
Thank you all, that was very sweet, but now I have nothing to bitch about!!! (I won’t cry, I won’t cry, nope, I won’t cry!!!)
@mikibell @barney, @thumperchick @humper
I like seeing how mehmbers are considerate.
@mikibell I’m glad it arrived in one piece. That was why there was so much air around that poor, solitary mug.
So all you sufferers: Whatzit like rite now?
@f00l cold…nothing happening here for 3 to 6 more hours…
@mikibell
No blizzard? Where’s the blizzard???
Don’t make me go to the DQ to get news of one!
@f00l
(wanna guess my mood?)
@f00l
It’s started. (Time to respond to some emails which I’ve been ignoring.)
@f00l much further north than the penguin and @mfladd…
@mikibell
Aren’t you glad you don’t live less than an hour from NYC?
@PlacidPenguin almost 2 hours…work closer…
Doesn’t look like Pittsburgh is going to get much. What a bummer.
@hanzov69 With the hills there it could have been fun - yes sledding down the street in a car LOL
@Kidsandliz right?
Also was hoping to play hooky and go snowboarding.
@hanzov69 Yes that would have been fun. I know of a very long downhill in Fox Chapel that would give you quite the ride (and quite the hike back up the hill).
Snow-mageddon and friends of @Barney?
@heartny Thas my posse.
@heartny
What’s with the necks? It looks like there are screens with air holes on them.
Since when do dinosaurs breath through their necks?
@PlacidPenguin We are evolving.
Alexa says it’s 32 degrees with freezing rain. Please don’t make me get out of bed.
@sammydog01
@f00l does not like freezing rain.
They cancelled the Blizzard warning in my area and again reduced the accumulation forecast, now 4-10". A far cry from the 24" predicted a few hours ago.
That said, it’s all freezing rain and sleet, so super-nasty and dangerous out there. And still the risk of high winds.
@ACraigL lucky… still under blizzard warning… at least 6" out there already and it is just starting, according to the weather person.
@ACraigL grrrr and I just went outside to clear the intake for the stove again, and I sank into the snow up to my knees… grrrrrr…
Alexa was calling for a temp of 96° on Friday, but it’s dropped to 85°.
It’s too early for summer. If it’s this hot now, what about in July? Not liking. At all.
@lisaviolet share some of that warmth, pleaassseeee…
I have baked magic bars and brownies to help keep the house warm this morning!!
@mikibell It’s 3/14, not 4/20.
@ACraigL not THAT kind of brownie!!! (yes, I had to google that)
I’m currently glaring at everybody in my mind.
@PlacidPenguin
Webcam!
Still under blizzard warning.
Wind is horrendous. Ok, sure. It’s not a tornado. However, the snow is blowing a lot. The blowing snow does look cool though.
There’s sleet mixed in with the snow, though before the snowfall ends tonight, it’ll change back into just sure, which means there’ll be a layer of ice to deal with.
Ugh.
@PlacidPenguin
/giphy penguin glaring
@f00l
Of what?
@PlacidPenguin
Of you glaring at everyone in your mind!
@PlacidPenguin @f00l Penguin webcam.
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals-and-experiences/live-web-cams/splash-zone-penguin-cam
@narfcake Nope not glaring : )
You know what is weird about blizzard days?? It is sooo quiet outside. Yes, there is wind and snow, but no cars, no trucks, no school buses, no dogs. It is odd.
@mikibell
In Mount Vernon, there’s hail, and the reporter said it felt like hundreds of needles were pelting his neck and face.
As for no cars, no kidding, while they aren’t ticketing people for traveling, thankfully logic is prevailing.
DeBlasio is talking, and he gave numbers for how many trucks, plows, etc are in NYC, and how he’s happy people aren’t out since it’s making it easier to plow there (not that that affects me).
@PlacidPenguin Why do news stations send their reporters out in inclement weather?
@narfcake
Gets ratings. People love looking at the well-paid poor schmucks.
@narfcake Because it’s fun to watch them fight the elements. Reality TV. The ratings really go up if Jim Cantore is spotted nearby, because you know there will be disaster.
@f00l As opposed to the unpaid poor schmucks?
/youtube 10 hours of fails
Ok cleared walk and drive. Another neighbor and I cleared walk and drive of my elderly neighbors. Tired debating a beer vs irish coffee as reward for hour and 20 min shoveling.
@CaptAmehrican irish coffee…
@CaptAmehrican
Hot and alcoholic.
@f00l Sounds like my cousin.
Here’s the most productive thing I did today.
@ACraigL oh yummy – I made that yesterday, but overcooked it a loooottt more… btw, if you use parchment paper, there is no clean up needed.
@mikibell That’s in-progress. I like mine crumbly and over-done as well.
@ACraigL Holy shit, you have a vertical bacon cooker!
@cinoclav It’s actually on my ceiling, but couldn’t get the angle right.
Mentally preparing myself to go outside and deal with the burden.
Still snowing, but the worst is over (I hope).
Still don’t have winter gloves, so my fingers and thumbs won’t be happy.
@PlacidPenguin Ugh. Feeling for ya. We had rain till 9:30am - that was it. Western shore got hit, but not us.
Got gloves.
Here’s a pic of snow by a door. It’s a considerable amount over a foot, and it’s a couple of feet thick.
I have another pic, but…
Oh, and I got ahold of gloves.
@PlacidPenguin good luck. Doing a bit at a time is key
@CaptAmehrican
I didn’t even touch the snow in the picture. Not worth it.
Working on a bigger area now.
@CaptAmehrican
Gave up and spent over half an hour helping get a minivan out from it’s location.
@PlacidPenguin That looks like a drift. How much actual snow?
@sammydog01
Somewhere between 20 inches and 2 feet.
@PlacidPenguin I thought you lived in New York City?
@sammydog01
Nope. A little less than an hour away.
@PlacidPenguin Chilling just to look at that. Glad you found gloves. My grandma used to say that at least it insulates the (door or window) so the wind can’t come through the cracks. Take care of yourself.
@OldCatLady hehehe we have one door where the seal came undone yesterday, and I have a stack of snow INSIDE the house…
that insulated us!!!
@PlacidPenguin Well that is nice… perhaps shut the door and take a nap. Maybe if you sleep until next week it will have all gone away.
My car is on a lawn, so getting it out will be easy.
Thankfully, I don’t have to deal will it.
My brother lives near Kennedy Airport. He had to deal with a whole inch of snow.
Ok how sad is it I tried and can not keep up with the panda at speed of crunches.
@heartny
GLARE
@PlacidPenguin
I’m safe!
@f00l
You’re going to be getting more than a glare from me.
Which reminds me…
@Barney - Hasn’t @f00l been teasing you lately?
@PlacidPenguin
@Barney
@f00l’s been horrible. I’d do something about it.
@f00l
If I were you, I wouldn’t participate in the next Mehxchange. I’d be worried that @PlacidPenguin would be my sender.
@PlacidPenguin Who’s @f00l? Someone who hangs out on this forum?
@PlacidPenguin
Whoa! Look at all that snow!
On TV!
/giphy snow
@Barney
Hear it’s lovely in Kansas!
/giphy pancake
@Barney
One of the 4 people (besides Mediocre employees) involved in getting you your Paperwhite.
@f00l Yep, flat.
@PlacidPenguin 4?
@Barney
/youtube Sesame Street Count 4
@PlacidPenguin So there is one other involved in this caper and I did not thank them. This makes me sad.
@Barney
I thought there were only three conspirators at the time. @PlacidPenguin won’t tell me who the fourth one is either. I have some suspicions, but they are nothing but guesses.
@f00l Thanks, but this news still makes me sad.
@Barney
I’ll thank them for you.
Also, I believe @f00l is making fun of the Land of Oz.
@PlacidPenguin
@f00l never makes fun of the Land of Oz.
/image “Ozma of Oz”
@PlacidPenguin Oohhhhh how much is it worth to you for me to rig that (to have your recipient to be @f00l)? Open to bribes LOL
@Kidsandliz
Maybe I won’t join the exchange.
And … don’t you owe me, kinda sorta?
@f00l Well so far your bribe is far better than her lack of bribe… (grin). No worries. I plan to do it completely randomly.
@Kidsandliz
Which other her is there?
That’s ok. I’d rather want other people to suffer now thus increasing the amount of payback which @f00l will get.
@Barney @f00l
@PlacidPenguin
@PlacidPenguin
PS this is your punishment for not telling me who else was involved in a purple Kindle.
@f00l
What’s my punishment? That you’re insulting the Land of Oz?
@PlacidPenguin
That I’m insulting everyone and everything.
PS OZ is a serious fav place. When I was four years old I had all the first 14 books memorized. My parents would make deliberate errors reading the books to test. I always caught the errors.
I
OZ. 
@f00l
It doesn’t bother me if you insult people.
@PlacidPenguin
Oops. Need to find a new scheme!
The old one had been rendered ineffective. So sad.
Going they my catalog. … what to choose, what to choose …
I hate snow… I hate everything related to snow… I hate being wet… I hate not being able to breathe in the cold… grrrrrr one angry breathless goat here… Broke the damn shovel, so I walked to my parents house to borrow theirs. Can’t leave them snowed in, so shoveled most of their driveway. Have to go back and clean off the car and get that last packed snow at the end. Had to clean out their fire hydrant too.
AND my parents had pecan sandies on the kitchen table, and I didn’t want to find out I am allergic to those… hate nut allergies too!!!
Walking home, fell on my ass – thankfully, it is well padded!!! (still hurt though)… That last hill really killed me. I still have to go and shovel out my car so I can return the shovel and finish their driveway… hate snow…
@mikibell p.s. the scarf that @kittysprinkles is sooooo warm… I made it that far because it kept the breeze off my neck and ears!
@mikibell Aaaaaw. Sorry for the snowpocalypse, but glad the scarf came in handy!
@KittySprinkles I love pretty items that are also functional…thank you!
Going to venture outside soon to try dealing with snow which was stubborn yesterday.
It either melted somewhat, or it melted and (re)froze.
On the bright side, it doesn’t look as windy as it was yesterday.
@PlacidPenguin yeah it is that layer of ice that is killer… the stuff underneath is like powder…
@mikibell
Good news - No ice layer on the snow really.
Bad news, based on how the roof was designed, a place which I cleaned yesterday and is vital, is now covered in ice.
Happens every snowfall.
OMG… I love my neighbors… I think I have to replace my dad’s shovel!!! I swear we have 3 feet of snow… I got through the ice packed 12 inches… and was just looking at the never diminishing pile thinking, I am going to die out here!!!
Then, my neighbor had a plow come and do her driveway/front area, so I went over to help her get the heavy shit out to be plowed. Damn is it heavy snow.
I didn’t realize the plow was her husband, I figured it was someone they paid to plow. I wasn’t going to ask for help at all, because that is money I just don’t have right now. Turns out it was her husband and he borrowed the truck from work… he got all that nasty hardpacked snow out from in front of my driveway AND gave me a place to park once I get the car out… I may just do a @barney and cry… I still hate snow, but I love my neighbors!!!
Hmmm and I found a package from NY on my front step, marked fragile — wonder what that is @thumperchick!! Once I can breathe again, I will open it!
@mikibell
Remember those raspberry whatever’s - shortbread cookies or something - you promised to bribe me with way back when in January during the voting?
I deed them all to your wonderful neighbors with my affection and thanks to go along with yours.
@f00l I brought them brownies… slightly underdone so they can be heated and ice cream can go on top!!!
@mikibell
That sounds beyond yummy!
I’m so glad you didn’t had to shovel everything yourself.
@f00l done… finally done, all cars freed… parents’ house had been finished by their neighbor, who then plowed in the hydrant that I cleared… they also re-cleared the hydrant…
Ok.
Cleaned my car off (not fully, but it’s now a manageable amount), though I still have to get it out of the snow.
When I was removing the snow, it got all around the car.
So besides 2 feet of snow, there’s now more around the car.
Oh well, I’ll just be based from home for the next few days.
@PlacidPenguin
Good, that way it can unfreeze and refreeze a bunch. Very Proactive.
@f00l
Sure… Let’s go with that…
@PlacidPenguin
We’re finally making some progress shoveling all the snow too.
I thought I was gonna have a heart attack there.
Soon it will be passable for short distances if I’m really careful and go slow.
It’s tough, shoveling in sandals and short sleeves like that. And I gotta wear sunscreen of course. Some poor people are having to do it barefooted. They must be acclimated. They seem to be enjoying it.
@f00l
Hey @OldCatLady, @RiotDemon, @magic_cave, @narfcake, @LaVikinga, all you there other folks who live southerly? How about some snow pix from today?
@PlacidPenguin the car is freed… the help of the neighbor allowed me to shovel a dent next to the door, and I shoveled the two feet more to the car, and I drove it out… Still not uncovered, but I am done… (I kinda scratched the windshield with the metal shovel… oooppps, don’t do that!!)
@mikibell
Aren’t you gonna praise me for my shoveling?
I’m hurt.
@f00l not liking you… and I don’t normally whine… this full time job crap sucks – who’s idea was it for my husband to work steadily so we can pay bills???
Part of my whining I just figured out is that I haven’t eaten today … going to make lunch!!!
@f00l you are funny (NOT!!!)
@f00l still have to go finish the parents’ driveway, but after I eat. Oh, and replace their shovel too… it was nice and flat, it is now a strange v shaped
(good thing they love me!!)
@mikibell
I’m glad your neighbors had machines.
Mostly tormenting @PlacidPenguin here.
Go get a wonderful lunch, take some ibuprofen if that’s ok, drink something warm, and take a nice nap.
If there’s more shoveling yo be done, you have kids.
If there’s more$ to be earned, “Calling Husband!!!”
Forgiven?
@mikibell
Plastic shovel here. Slight crack in it from a different snowfall. It may be plastic, but it’s still good.
The hard snow made things slightly easier for me. I dug underneath the hard snow, tossed the snow aside, put the shovel under the hard snow, and lifted it.
I’d get my car out and move it to the driveway, but there was a different car there, so plowing wasn’t fully great.
Despite it being a long driveway, it’s also narrow now because of the snow.
So… I’m stuck keeping my car on the lawn for now.
@f00l
I’d rather you insult NY than Kansas.
@f00l There are white things falling from the sky, like this. They might be calamondin blooms, but who really knows?
@PlacidPenguin the first shovel I broke was plastic… should have duct taped it, but it was too dark to identify the problem last night. Was worth the trek to get the metal shovel.
@OldCatLady
Be grateful you were already goated.
@f00l You do know, don’t you, that if you wake up one morning with a stake through your heart you had it coming… just saying…
@Kidsandliz
You live in the South.
If I get staked, you get staked.
/giphy staked
@PlacidPenguin
Too late. Insulted Kansas already earlier today.
@f00l umm don’t think so (get staked too). I am not flaunting that I live in the south… instead I have been helpfully posting really deep snow pics so those in the current storm know it could be worse… because I know just how much better that will make them feel (insert evil grin here - oh wait this might be a stakeable offense too - past the 5 min edit time to remove those. Opps).
@Kidsandliz
Bloodhounds can find you my dear.
/giphy foxhounds
@f00l
You mean like this?
@f00l
@narfcake
SoCal ice? Wow! Bad storm!
@f00l I know! Over 8 whole millimeters in some areas! And the wind was blowing the whole time at over 15 cfm!
Then I pulled my lunch out …
@Kidsandliz
I wud pownt owt dat de hund fond de fox.
@Kidsandliz
So congratulations. Now those people who got snow this week will not only be thinking about their current predicament, but also about how other places have gotten more snow in the past.
Still better than insulting Kansas.
I should point out though that March is almost halfway done, and you’ve never been goat yet…
@PlacidPenguin
@f00l Or could be the fox fond de hund to chase it away…
@PlacidPenguin Pffff … sounds like a personal
vendettaproblem to me : )PS better re-read the past couple of goat nomination threads and see whose names were put up, how many votes they got (or didn’t) and what promises were made there
@Kidsandliz
Need I remind you of the discussion on June 14, 2016?
@f00l Spent over an hour this afternoon covering up all the tender plants and blooms which have popped over the last ten days in anticipation of tonight’s freeze. The gusty winds were NOT a help. I was dithering about doing it at all, but Himself rolled in early from work swearing it was going to go down into the mid twenties for us tonight and stay there for several hours. Glad we’ve gotten it finished early while it’s still sorta kinda warmish in the sunshine because my Viking blood has really thinned out over the years. Don’t miss those freezing cold temperatures at all!
@OldCatLady …You have access to calamansi??? Oh my god. If there is anything I miss about where I lived in Florida, it is easy access to calamansi, the Best Citrus.
@Kawa I have one in my front yard. Occasionally I make a batch of marmalade. Maybe later this week, if it stays cool. At the moment everybody is desperately trying to give away bags of grapefruit.
@OldCatLady I was eyeing some sorry looking grapefruit for a $1 each this week. I guess I could offer some fresh snow to trade…
@PlacidPenguin maybe this is a sign meh should offer a shovel in a month or two
@CaptAmehrican
Pffft. It’s not like I’d buy it.
(The stuff which I would buy would never be sold on Meh anyways.)
@Kidsandliz
Fox und hund BFF forever-forever-forever.
@LaVikinga
It’s expected to freeze in Jacksonville? Wow.
I remember hearing how they would put the pots out to burn in the citrus groves. Do they still do that?
@OldCatLady I would pay shipping costs + some more for a USPS Medium flat rate box filled with grapefruit and calamansi jam. Completely seriously.
@Kawa me too
@f00l Probably still use pots? I think most of the orange groves are 150+ miles south of us.
I’m hoping my strawberries hold up. They’re well covered and are an absolute fluke they’re growing. Bot a strawberry planter complete with plants last fall. Got three tiny berries and then I thought the thing was all but dead since it had about 7 leaves. Suddenly, last month it took off like gangbusters and has been putting out quite a bit of fruit already.
@CaptAmehrican @Kawa Move (back) to Florida. This time of year, people leave bags of citrus on friends’ doorknobs, because there is no possible way to eat all the stuff that comes ripe at the same time. Even with one tree of each kind, we’re drowning in the stuff. It’s been too warm to even think about making preserves all fall and winter.
@f00l
@Thumperchick
Can you rotate that photo for me? It showed up correctly on my phone. Gah.
@OldCatLady I left for a reason, honestly; I love walking through NYC, not triggering my driving phobia by using public transit, finding weird art, and watching weird theater, none of which were accessible in Florida. It’s also much easier for me to find people worth dating that’ll agree to my kind of weirdness.
But god, I miss the citrus so badly.
It was my favorite fruit even before I moved to Florida, and then I was horribly spoiled by how great the citrus is down there. Harvey’s Groves in Brevard was my go-to; they sold juice, jams, and citrus that wasn’t pretty enough for shipping boxes to the locals in these seasonally-open stores, and it was just amazing. They never had calamansi marmalade though!!
I really will pay for a box full of grapefruit now, and maybe calamansi marmalade later. I had a calamansi tree in my yard in Florida, and it was my favorite to put on everything, but I never learned to can; the instant you mentioned it I was full of that one specific regret.
@Kawa You can order grapefruit from ‘Indian River’ region growers, but if I put up a batch of calamondin marmalade, I’ll let you know. I’m leaning toward using the refrigerator method. Pressure or hot water canning requires organization- and cooler weather. It’s going back to 80 next week. Local churches and homeless shelters have boxes of donated citrus sitting around. Very few homeless people possess juicers, so grapefruit aren’t popular, but oranges etc. get some takers.
@Kawa
Re NYC
Exactly
I
NY
Florida too
I
In Manhattan, is there still a Museum of Holography?
Regarding grapefruit:
My fav is the ruby red grapefruit for which the Rio Grande Valley is famous. It’s a natural variety.
Meant to be peeled and eaten, not juiced: needs no sugar. Naturally sweet and not bitter.
People mail order it all the time. If you want to try some, there are many sources. Here are several:
http://blog.pittmandavis.com/send-grapefruit-from-the-rio-grande-valley/
http://giftfruit.bellsfarm.com/why-texas-grapefruit/
https://www.crockettfarms.com/
http://www.lonestargrapefruit.com/fruit/fruit-gifts/individual-packs.html
@f00l It would make me look like such a tourist, but man, a “I
FL” enamel pin would be so good. Maybe I’ll pick one up next time I visit.
Museum of Holography in Soho is no more, but across the East River in Queens there is the Center for the Holographic Arts: http://holocenter.org/ I haven’t been, but I should.
Yeah, I know grapefruit can be professionally shipped; Harvey’s Groves, as I mentioned does it. Not Rio Grande, but other grapefruit, and other citrus including Honeybells: http://www.harveysgroves.com/
I mostly meant my offer as a “I volunteer to consume the fruit you can’t give away!” thing.
@Kawa Can’t even do that at this time. Citrus greening is a very, very big threat, and the only way to get home-grown citrus out of state is to drive it yourself- and hope you don’t get pulled for an ag inspection. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2014/08/25/citrus-trees-move-it-and-lose-it
@OldCatLady we lost a grapefruit tree years ago because of a citrus canker infected tree within however many miles. The government came and removed it to help stop any spread. What a bummer. It was rampant at the time. I remember them thinking that Florida would lose all of its citrus.
Where I live now, I have oaks and palms. Wish I had citrus trees. These trees have been here for a really long time, so I wouldn’t get rid of them. I can drive to orange groves in about ten minutes though. There used to be a local market that would sell oranges and grapefruit ten for $1. I miss that so much.
@RiotDemon Now I wish I had picked some up when I was in Florida last week.
@f00l Sorry – my email in-box and I are in a love-hate relationship, and I didn’t visit it yesterday.
We had no snow whatsoever. The lowest temp recorded here over the last couple of days was 39, which is chillier than usual for late March.
We actually haven’t had snow here since 1989, when about 2" fell just a couple of days before Christmas. I know that doesn’t sound like much to any [cough] Yankee folks used to 24" but southern cities don’t have snow plows, snow tires, snow shovels, or even snow clothing. We had a couple of days of rain and sleet, and the snow arrived on the 23rd. Kids were ecstatic, parents were crazed, schools and most malls and stores had to close.
The city is bisected by a river, and residents rely heavily on four bridges to commute. Police shut down the bridges for safety purposes. My front porch screen door froze shut, and my two small poodles tried desperately to put no more than one foot at a time into horrible awful white stuff. Two cars slid off the street in front of my house and landed in drainage ditches.
For one person’s view of the snowfall, you can enjoy kid’s delight here:
@OldCatLady Ah man, I think the greening was just getting under way when I was leaving.
Oh well.
@dave @snapster
Was watching The Talk since with the weather I caught up with a lot of my watchlist, and I got to watch the MorningSave segment.
I found it funny when I watched the excitement over a drone that they were showing off.
@PlacidPenguin now that’s true commitment
@snapster Soooo … the penguin gets a catshirt?
@narfcake
Are you TRYING to get @snapster to make me stop participating on the forum?
@PlacidPenguin As if @snapster would sell a catshirt here …
Besides, this is probably more suitable:
@PlacidPenguin @snapster better question is how do you choose between the two different color options… drats on morningsave… it is another money draining endeavor!!! (from my bank account to his!!!)
@mikibell
Same way you do it here. When you click buy, there’s a dropdown menu with color choices.
@PlacidPenguin Don’t forget, VMP gets you an additional 10% off on the site. I just bought my third set of sheets.
Warning… Extreme Crashing
http://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/heres-a-roughly-ten-million-car-pileup-in-yesterdays-snowstorm/
Comments read “This is from January 2015: I-94 Michigan.”
Maybe just going viral due to present blizzard conditions in the northeast?
@connorbush I was in a 25 car pile up some years ago in a blizzard. I managed to stop in time as I was going a sane speed in the slow lane. Unfortunately people behind me were not and I was hit multiple times and finally shoved into a stack of cars (hit by a taxi who was hit by a honda civic who was hit by an 18 wheeler… you get the picture). Car was totaled I had bumps and bruises.
Snow on driveway and sidewalk this morning.
Drove off without shoveling a bit.
All gone by the time I got home.
/giphy winning
@hanzov69
Be glad I’m busy glaring at someone else and am unable to glare at you.
@PlacidPenguin If I can find it again there is someone “plowing” their driveway with a dog in a remote control construction plow toy… maybe go buy one of those? I have a snow blower for sale… not that I can sell it in MS, had it from when I lived in northern ID and forgot to sell it before I moved. Pay the postage and boxing up and it is yours.
@f00l wanted some photos of the Florida snow.
Liquid snow as far as the eye can see.
Some purple snowflakes for @Barney.
This odd vanilla flavored snowball.
@RiotDemon Aww… Pretty purple.
@RiotDemon
Well I hope you shoveled that last one.
@f00l hard work, but I got it done.
@RiotDemon Well this is a snow job if I ever saw one LOL (all pun intended).
@Kidsandliz You watch your mouth…
@hanzov69 What am I watching it for? Might it run off? (grin)
@brhfl how pretty…are they flowers that will survive the freeze?
@mikibell I’m really not sure. They’re from one of the gardens in DC that I regularly stroll through, so hopefully there’s some budget being allotted to replanting them if they don’t survive. Sigh.
@brhfl
I don’t think the white blossoms will survive. They are already too transparent.
Can’t tell about the orange ones by looking.
If the petals freeze, they’re gone. It bursts the cell walls.
Apparently my area will be getting 2-5 more inches of snow.
Ugh.
Now, I don’t like backing into spots, so I had to get someone to reverse my car into where it was earlier this week.
Ugh.
@mikibell - Take a blame.
@PlacidPenguin same here…except for the driving in reverse part - I even enjoy parallel parking!
@mikibell
I have no need to parallel park where I live. The few times where I even get close to having to parallel park, it’s usually one of two or three empty spots, so parking is simple.
Meanwhile, I blame you for the fact that I wasted time relocating my car for snow which didn’t even stick.
@PlacidPenguin shouldn’t you be blaming her for no snow since penguins like snow?
@Kidsandliz
(Except, I’ve never been on a plane, so…)
@PlacidPenguin would you prefer this?
@Kidsandliz
@Lotofgoats is coming to visit me?
@PlacidPenguin
