Old Tooth Faerie

Along with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Cupid, leprechauns and unicorns the myths of our childhoods not to forget the financially beneficial Tooth Faerie, one of my favorites. Well I'm well past that stage of life and lately I've been visited by the Tooth Troll who's been living in my upper gums just being grumpy. I finally paid a visit to my long time dentist and after a series of x-rays, electronic pulp tests and drop in by one of the practice's endodontists I left with a freshly done root canal. Drinking a hot cuppa coffee becomes dicey business after that.

Firing blanks

Like life isn't exciting enough as it is all it takes are a few weather maps and several zealous meteorologist, tossed in with a couple of TV news anchors and you have the makings of disasters on our door steps. Sure over the last two and a half weeks we've averaged a snow event every three days and leading into this weekend was the BLIZZARD of 2015 II. Technically a blizzard refers to a high winds event and in cold weather in the northeast US copious amounts of snow usually accompanies that wind for good measure. The forecast for my region began at 15 to 20 inched overnight yesterday well into today. Made sure the generator was ready, stocked up on essential supplies, beer, wine, snacks. In southwest Maine and further in that direction in Boston yes they got blasted. Here on Ledge Hill and the surrounding area maybe 3 inches but we do have a lot of wind... beer, wine, snacks.

Let the pummeling continue

And so it does. We're at the front end of a 40 hour snow event, the third snow since my last post. Yesterday morning I under took some maintenance on the snowbeast, changed out the drive and auger belts, good that I had as the auger belt had a few cross tears and was only held together by the fabric outer band. Sort of explained why it clogged easily and wasn't throwing snow very far. Would have been dire straits had it broken during the thick of the snowfall. Started the operation by running it until I used up the gas in the tank as it's not made to be emptied. Then I could bring it into the heated mudroom and open up a top cover to expose the belts from that direction followed by lifting up the back end by the handle bars to tip the whole thing over onto the auger housing exposing the bottom plate cover to get at the belts and pulleys from that direction. From there it involved dissembling, twisting, prying, swearing, coaxing, backing out, going forward, fetching another tool or two to go down the rabbit hole and back out again. Then flipping it back round so the correct end was up, dragged it outside, with a splash of gas the beast made a funny sound, shut it down, tweaked the auger cable and all was good. So in spite of my lack of mechanical skills I'm better prepared for what was on the way. This storm started slow enough late in the afternoon, light drifting flakes. By this morning it had only amounted to an inch plus. Since then maybe there more inches, maybe another four by morning followed by another four or more through tomorrow.

Looking ahead there may be a light snow around Thursday and a steady cold spell through the weekend. I hope to have the igloo dug out by then.

Snow Pummeled

After a long stretch of cold dry weather of which I had not complained one iota - a few comments and chats about the cold but in my reckoning very tolerable climate for the time of year. Bam! In one week the pendulum has swing to a place I don't want to be. As I type this we are having our third snow storm since the Blizzard of 2015 I wrote of six days ago. Besides all the work and inconvenience we are on the verge of not being able to put the snow yet to come as forecast later this week. That's right, two more storms may be on the way. After cleaning up the drive of Friday night's snow on Saturday morning Carol and I spent several hours Sunday morning breaking down some snow banks and snowthrowing it away from the driveway/parking areas. I'm a bit tired of it all to say the least.

parking area is getting smaller