Day 415

The first thing I did this morning was fall on the ice and hit my head on the concrete driveway. I've had a headache for the rest of the day. This weather is absolutely treacherous. It's not just ice on the roads now. It's ice everywhere. All the remaining snow has turned into thick sheets of ice. It's hard to go ten feet without falling on your butt. I wish I could just train the dogs to use the toilet, but they insist on going on their regular walks. I really need a pair of golf shoes or football cleats. Even my good hiking boots don't have any traction on this ice. I have to look for grassy areas and kick through the ice sheet with every step to avoid falling over. I don't know how the dogs manage to stay upright. They do slip and slide a bit, but they certainly seem to get around a lot better than I do. Their claws must give them the extra traction I'm looking for.

Still no mail delivery today. I drove down to the post office to see what was going on and discovered that the postmaster didn't know much more than I did. He did tell me that Cindy, our regular mail carrier, was sick and that they were using a substitute this week. He also told me that the mail carriers were authorized to come in early without finishing their deliveries if conditions looked bad. I guess conditions looked bad to the new guy all week, since I still haven't received any mail. It'll be a miracle if I ever get all of this week's mail. I wouldn't be surprised if some of it got thrown under the mail truck's tires to get out of a ditch.

Everybody seems to be blaming the city's weather related misfortunes on the Superbowl. The street would be clear, they say, if all the sand trucks hadn't been diverted to clear the streets around the Superbowl. Yesterday's power outages would never have happened if the Superbowl hadn't sucked up all the power. On and on it goes. I've never heard so many things blamed on the Superbowl in my life. I think the real reason for all the slowdowns is that we just don't know how to cope with Winter down here. Hey, if we wanted snow and ice, most of us wouldn't have moved to Texas in the first place.

Nobody seems to know if the garbage trucks are going to pick up the trash on our street tomorrow morning. Somehow, I doubt it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day