The big thaw. It’s amazing how much this stuff melts when the temperature rises a few degrees. And it’s amazing how much of a mess it makes.

It’s nice to be able to drive again, although getting in and out of our street was still a little difficult thanks to piles of snow pushed into the intersection by the plows. I agree with Portland’s decision not to use salt on the roads for environmental reasons but it sure does suck when you want to drive anywhere.

Now the 24 hour coverage of the snowstorm has turned into 24 hour coverage of the clean up. Gravel and sand needs to be scraped off the roads, late mail needs to be delivered (Kei’s Christmas present arrived today – 6 days after the original scheduled delivery), and garbage has to be collected. Oh, and we missed a garbage bill (good incentive to finally clean up the study) so we were already 2 weeks behind in the garbage pickup and now we’ve missed two more weeks. Good thing they gave us a new enormous yard waste bin a couple of months ago. We’re using it to temporarily store the overflowing bags of dirty diapers (perhaps incentive to use cloth —- maybe not).

So a white Christmas sounds all fun and romantic but, in a city where we are not at all prepared to deal with the aftermath, it’s really not that much fun at all. I know some people love it but it’s just not for me.