Winter Wonderlands are Fun...Until You Actually Have To Go Outside

I am a big fan of snow. I love the way it provides some kind of aesthetic pleasantness to the normally dreary winter. Those bare trees get a coat of wonderful white. The snow hides the death that appears everywhere in winter. I know those trees don't really die when the leaves fall off in November, but they sure look dead and the snow helps to hide it.

Having said that, the snow sucks when you actually have to go out in it. It's lovely, so long as you are contained in your fish bowl of a living space, admiring it from the distance. Compare it to the shark tank at the zoo. Sharks are pretty cool to look at, but you don't want to jump in there with them. That would be crazy. So is going out when there is over a foot of snow on the ground.

Here in Columbia, Missouri we got over a foot of snow. Some people have said 16 inches, some people have said 20 inches. It doesn't appear to be that deep. But 12-14 inches seems like a reasonable number. We got this huge gift on the night Thursday, November 30. College got cancelled on Friday, December 1, as you would expect. But you would think that they would be able to clear the roads and parking lots by the following Monday, right? Wrong. The roads by my house are just packed down with frozen slush, and it is all rocky too. Not a nice smooth surface. I felt like I was in the old west driving to school this morning. And then, the parking lot I usually park in was not plowed. There is no way my little car would have survived the unplowed lot. So I had to improvise and find a new place to park that was plowed. That took some time and disrupted my usual morning routine.

I can't believe that the roads are still as bad as they are. The public works folks should get the heave ho, right out into the foot of snow they failed to handle.