but... the street is clear three feet behind my car!

long story short, i’ll be working from home today. i’m just hoping someone will find some humor in my situation. it’s got to be good for something, right?

well, given yesterday’s efforts (blocked in by snow, some of it plowed from the street to behind our cars), and cleanup effort through the day (cleared both cars, shoveled all non-frozen stuff with a shovel borrowed from a neighbor, sprinkled salt pilfered from the apartment--they’re dropping bags off at each building), i thought i’d be able to get out today.

of course, since you’re reading this (or not), i can’t. all eight tires are now in their own little ice cradles. well, i guess *something* melted.

with an hour of salting, chipping, and pawing, both cars are still snugly in their cradles. i guess it’s just as well, since getting out of the spot will only be half the battle.

our kind neighbor with the shovel salted and shoveled all day yesterday, and got his entire spot cleared. he’s not here right now. when he returns, he will be able to park in his cleared spot, because he pays the extra $50 a month to reserve himself a spot. i’ve never seen the point in paying that much each month for a spot, especially since i’ve never parked more than maybe 20 yards from the door to my building. i did not consider the small detail of being able to clear your *own* spot of snow, and knowing that nobody else will reap the benefits of your hard work and force you to work all over again. if i were to get out of my spot, there would be a great possibility of me then having to dig my way back into a spot on my return.

***

being suck at home isn’t all bad, though. i get to watch people try to get out of their spots. the street that leads into mine is slanted from one end of the road to the other (mine’s slanted from one side to another, and the top side of the hill is visitor parking—off limits to me), so they’re not quite as stuck in.

i saw someone pull into and out of a spot four or five times (this took about 20 minutes total) before settling on parking the car with the front tires on the sidewalk. the guy corrected this after he got out of the car and saw what he did, but the people walking on the sidewalk at the time were not happy with him.

i saw a man happily get out of his car and let a stranger pull his car of the spot, and then drive it halfway down the street. it’s funny what being stuck for an hour will do to you.

i saw a man try to clear the ice off his car with a bottled drink. matt helped him out, and it turns out that it was a rental. his car was in the shop. guess where his scraper was... poor guy.

i saw a pizza delivery guy get out of his car and scoot himself around a visitor’s spot, not lifting his feet. he looked like he wanted to be a penguin, though i suppose this was his way of clearing the spot before he pulled into it. he then took the delivery sign off the top of his car and walked away… and i thought someone was getting pizza.

i saw a two-wheel drive accord driver put cardboard under (only) his back tires. for some reason, he left his car where he got stuck instead of pulling the two feet back into the spot.

i can only imagine what’s going on with the furniture delivery trucks rolling by…

after all this, i still have no idea where most of my neighbors are (most didn’t come home monday night—maybe they knew it would be a bad idea).

***

at this point, i doubt that i will be able get out tomorrow, either. i’ll probably ask my parents to bring over a snow shovel on saturday, and then we’ll go see about buying our own snow shovel. after all, digging out a different spot every day is better than perpetually pawing at the same spot.

and i've got cabin fever.

in response to the threat of a water main break...

i've filled every nalgene i own with filtered water.

yes, i'm insane.

yes, i'm okay with that.

i didn't know what to do with this...

so i've finally settled on posting it here.

my favorite vs model made #6 on askmen.com's top 99 most desirable women!

that's all.

battle of the *real* mtvs

i love mhd. yes, i know it's still run by the same people that run mtv, mtv2, vh1, and cmt (did i miss anything?), but it's what *music* tv should be. it's music videos. it's shows. and by shows, i mean performances, not "the real world" shit. being in high-def is just an added benefit.

recently, though, matt discovered the tube. the tube shows nothing but music videos. old, new, rock, country... it's all mixed up. no "hip hop hour" (the thing i miss most about mtv2). partially because it seems to show no hip hop whatsoever. but more importantly because it doesn't define times for anything. it's just music videos, all the time. matt loves the tube.

i'm not so sure, though. the tube shows awesome videos that you can't find anywhere else, but they're all very low quality (true of both the video and audio).

while mhd runs shows like vh1 storytellers, mtv2 $2 bill, mtv life and rhymes, mtv unplugged, cmt crossroads, and cmt giants (by no means an exaustive list), it also runs its own shows. "music with altitude: goo goo dolls" and "gorillaz: live in harlem" are my absolute favorites. i've seen both multiple times, but i still can't help dropping everything to watch these two programs (another happy point for merc: since there is very little mhd content, they repeat the good stuff often. you never have to worry when you miss something).

if you check the mhd web site, it's also nice enough to color code its program listings--blue for mhd content(usually the best stuff), green for mtv (mtv/mtv2) content, burgundy/pink (pink when highlighted) for vh1 content, and bronze for cmt content. how organized. how pretty.

you had me at "goo goo dolls."

bad news for any blog fans i have left...

i've started a knitting blog. this could be good or bad for this blog... i don't know if it'll take all the time i would have taken to blog here, or if it'll inspire me to sit down at blogger more often, therefore making me blog here more often.

while i'm here, though, i'd like to mention two things. about cars i've seen on the road lately.

there's a douche driver that has a myspace url pasted on both sides of his car. i saw him on 66 on the way home, and it was ridiculous. he was weaving through traffic at 95, he was hitting his brakes and going 60 in he left lane, next to other cars (to flash his myspace, perhaps?). oh, and it sounded like he punched a hole in his muffler.

i also saw some middle-aged asian lady driving a volvo today who couldn't stay in her own lane. and stopped a full 40-50 feet behind the car in front of her at a light. and, somehow, tried turning into a parking lot where there was no entrance (as in... she almost turned into the curb). she eventually swerved back to the normal part of the road, and turned where she was supposed to, but...
...
how do these people get licenses?