If the snow keeps up.

We won’t be getting out of Dodge tomorrow,  that’s for sure.

I think I mentioned a plan to tool down to Slovenia for the weekend, but we’re supposed to get 40 cm today (that’s around 16 inches for you metrically challenged)  and my impression is that it’s going to continue….

 

I know it’s just a boring picture out our balcony door,  but that was at eight this morning.  Right after I got home from driving Travelling Companion to work.   We’re at opposite ends of the stress spectrum when it comes to driving in the snow.  She’d be nearly in tears by the time she got there if she drove,  whereas I’m more concerned with whether of not I might need to go to the bathroom.  The driving conditions are nowhere near the top of my list of “concerns”.

 

The traffic wasn’t all that bad, but then again we did head out at the crack of crazy time.  Something to do with someone waking up way too early?  It’s a gift.

We did encounter one slight mishap on the way,  where a hapless fellow was going a little too fast on one of the underpasses and pranged into the concrete barrier.   He started to skid out and managed to avoid hitting the right side,  but then went perpendicular and sort of wrinkled the front end of his Saab.  I think it was a Saab,  it was kind of covered in snow.

My guess is he didn’t have all the bells and whistles that some of the cars are equipped with,  since Travelling Companion mentioned how she nearly wiped out in that very spot one morning but,  “the car made some funny noises and I stopped skidding.”   The “funny noises”  were actually a combination of ABS and Traction Control.   Something that can easily be poo-pooed as unnecessary, until that one time when it saves yer ass.

Even after he extricated himself from his little dilemma,  which was a darned good thing too, as he was blocking the only way onto the highway,  he still managed to drive fast enough to disappear into the traffic ahead.

I just said to T.C. “Well,  you can’t fix stupid”.

We saw him parked at the side of the road not too far from the office of The Company that Cannot be Named,  and I was quite willing to take a photo for you on my return trip, except he was still in his car on the phone.  Didn’t think it was prudent. He was quite likely calling the cops to file a report.  Or maybe he was talking to his Mom.  

 

This is just outside the Museums Quartier,  not that you’d be able to tell.  I know that second word looks like French,  but it’s a German word that they borrowed, and so it’s pronounced ‘kwarteer’.  Rhymes with ‘steer’. My phonetic spelling is nonexistent, so that’s the best I can do.

You won’t see those streets looking like that in the brochures.

 

I actually did see someone on a bike this morning.  I suppose there’s some sort of thought process that sees riding in that stuff as a challenge.  It’s not a thought process I’m familiar with.

If it snowed that hard in the Netherlands,  where the bike was my primarily means of transportation,  I would either be driving somebody to work,  and would therefore have a fine set of German engineered wheels to tool around in if need be,  or I’d simply stay home.

 

The “story” that I was going to relate will have to wait for another day.   It was just something that I started spewing out a couple days ago,  and all I need do is check it over and hit “publish”.  It’s one of the reasons I kind of like this Live Writer program,  since I’m not really then dependant on having a working internet connection to blurt things out from the tips of my fingers.  Plus, all the spewing is saved right here on this computer.  Of course, it never hurts to hit the “save local draft” thingy once in a while,  as well as do regular back-ups of the whole shootin’ match.  Don’t ask.

 

I highly recommend it, and by that I mean the program,  but I may very well be preaching to the converted.  Oh,  and do the back up thing too.  So far so good on that front.

 

This is now at 10:00 o’clock. 

There’s a ball of bird seed under there somewhere.

OK, enough of that. 

 

Oh!   We do have a moving company.   It’s going to be Interdean,  and they’re the same bunch that moved us over the Atlantic back in 08.  I suppose as moving companies go,  they’re fine. 

Late yesterday afternoon Travelling Companion got a call from someone in Canada (quel suprise!)  going over the expectations.  It seems that the very smart people in Texas somehow thought we wanted out of here in the second last week of the month.  What?  Not sure where they got that idea.  I don’t want to talk about them any more. Just hurts my head. 

This time around we’re going to be doing an “Air Shipment” in addition to the regular move,  which has been an option for each of the moves over the years,  but one that we didn’t feel we had the need for.   We get something like 62 square feet.  At first I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

So this morning I’m trying to decipher what the heck they mean by “sixty-two square feet”,  and as near as I can figure,  they’re trying to say it’s a cubic metre.  That makes sense,  but maybe someone forgot (again) that we’re Canadian,  and we can in fact do that metric thing. 

OK, that sounds fine.  Enough room for some extra clothes, and maybe a sewing machine.  Not sure about the guitar.  It might have to go with the regular dog and pony show.

 

I realise I’m at that age where I still use feet and inches when it comes to building materials and such, but it never hurts to be bilingual on the measurement end of things.  If you’ve never tried it,  you should.  Measuring by TEN instead of 12 is so simple even I can do it.   It’s just something you learn and get used to.  Not unlike driving on the left in the UK. 

OK, maybe that’s a bad example. 

 

Once upon a time I had to install an entire kitchen that had been purchased at Ikea and of course it was all metric.  It took a couple goes with the tape measure to figure out what was what,  but it wasn’t too long before I knew exactly what a “70mm cabinet”  looked like,  for example. 

I think that’s the part about measuring in metric that seems to scare the bejeepers out of those unfamiliar.  “Twenty centimetres?  What’s that?”   Well, try this.  Hold your (reasonably normal sized) hand up and spread it out so your thumb and pinkie are as far apart as possible.  That’s close enough.   Can you measure out eight inches without looking at a ruler?  Maybe.  But maybe not.   So if the snow is going to pile up to 40 cm?   Well guess what?  You just figured it out.  See,  it’s not that hard.

End of lesson.

 

And….it’s….still….snowing.

 

Have a fine day. The jury is out on ours.

 

Keep it between the ditches.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

.