The snow is melting.

I think the official snowfall for the area was 12.5 inches, with the previous record for the area being 12.1 inches in 1964. I don't think that there was actually that much snow in my yard, but there was a lot.

The snow in my yard is already starting to melt, while most of my neighbors still have a solid blanket of white outside. We think that is has something to do with our having green plants (weeds), while most everyone else has dormant grass. We have seen a few other places with green grass next to otherwise solid white areas. And there is a snowman at the corner, and another one on the next street over. The snowmen are a bit odd looking. Obviously none of us know how to make one.

My husband seems quite obsessed with the fallen tree branch in our front yard. Someone helped him mostly pull it out of the street when we first found it. That was not to his liking, and he has twice moved it a bit more by himself. He keeps wanting to go to the office to get someone to cut it up or haul it away. I wanted to stay in, and I think that they were busy doing other things anyway. Yesterday he wanted to go to the office again. Yesterday was Saturday, and there's no one in the office on Saturday. It can wait til Monday. In fact, now that it is out of the street, it can wait indefinitely. What is the big deal about a tree branch? Other people around here have to deal with having no power, or leaking roofs, or broken windows, or damage to their cars. Leave the branch alone. Either the maintenance people will come and deal with it next week, or it can just stay there for a while. It isn't even touching the house. It isn't a problem.

Well, he worked on Tuesday as scheduled, had Wednesday off because as usual there isn't enough work to go around, had Thursday's job cancelled because of the snow, had Friday's job cancelled because of the snow, ended up working at a different place on Friday cause someone else got stuck in the snow, got to come home early on Friday cause even though that particular job wasn't cancelled on Friday most of the customers decided to cancel anyway, and then he didn't go to work on Saturday cause even though the roads were now mostly okay to drive on the job had already been cancelled. This week should be almost back to normal, and he is scheduled to work four days.

I am still wondering if they will postpone that scheduled power outage yet again. I will do a lot of cooking on Monday, just in case it is still on. I have heard that most of the stuff in the freezer will be okay, but I'll have to throw out a lot of stuff from the fridge. Of course, it is about time to clean out the fridge anyway.

I have received a jury summons. Contrary to popular belief, I do not have the answer to getting out of jury duty. Not that I'm going to try this time, I think that it is one of those that pays forty dollars a day, and I might as well get it over with next month. I'm a little concerned with the instructions I received. It says something about no electronic devices. That doesn't mean cell phones, does it? Surely they don't expect us to find our way to the courthouse and such without our cell phones.

Saturday we went out to lunch at Cheddars. After all the giggling we did when we were on the road and heard about people waiting hours to get into the place cause it was new, we actually like the one here, though it does not take hours to get in. Having been mostly stuck in the house for days, we decided just to go where we wanted to go instead of looking for coupons and such. We will call it an early Valentine's Day dinner.

I bought some more scrap lumber. So now I have quite a stack of it, though it looks like it will be a while before I can paint it and otherwise do anything with it.

Sunday we went out again. My whole front yard is now melted except for a couple of snowballs. Other people still have a lot of snow or not. And there are a lot of places that only have snow where someone tried to make a snowman or an igloo or something. Big mounds of snow here and there on an otherwise melted yard or field.

After having the nice lunch on Saturday, Sunday evening we just went to Whataburger for some buy one buy one free deal available only to people who had nothing better to do than go to Whataburger for dinner on Valentine's Day. After that we went to the grocery store, and then mostly couldn't remember what we were going to buy since we were trying not to buy anything that needed to be put in the fridge. Then we got a couple of DVDs from Redbox and went home.

Okay, not very exciting. It was just good to get out for a bit.