Maximum Throwing Power

In what was being billed as the Storm of the Century (StarTribune Photo Gallery), and perhaps one of Minnesota’s 10 worst storms of all time, the snow was coming and I had to make a mad dash Saturday morning to finally clean out the gutters. It was a nasty job I had been putting off for a long time. But I had these nightmare visions of ice packed gutters crashing down come Sunday. So to get my gutter cleaning engine all revved up, and so I could practice some Eddie Van Halen’s on my roof top, I bought a few songs off the new Blink-182 and threw ’em on ye olde iPod. I was ready for action.

Turns out the gutters of this house haven’t been cleaned since Shrinky Dinks were big. The job turned quickly into an archeological dig. There was at least a solid inch and a half of sediment in my gutters. Fortunately my passion for procrastination payed off. The freezing temperatures had turned what would have been a terribly messy job into a rather easy job of breaking off large junks of gutter sludge and then removing them one log at a time. The photo above shows just some of the logs pulled out of the gutters from the garage.

I have this gigantic foot deep hole in the backyard, a product of what, I’m not sure. But it’s just dumb luck that no one has wretched an ankle by falling in this hole yet. Through my own genius I decided to use all the gutter logs to fill the hole. Hopefully something strange and wonderful will grow out of it now come springtime.

I finished up the gutters just as the snow was starting to fall. And by Sunday, just after the Packers polished off the 49ers, I’d say we had about five to six inches of snow on the ground. Certainly not the ‘Storm of the Century’. When it comes to a midwestern-snowstorm-throwdown SIZE DOES MATTER! I mean five to six inches just ain’t going to cut it. You have to bring a solid 10 to 12 inches for anyone around here to really stand up and take notice. But it was enough snow for the first decent shoveling – another chore I haven’t had to do in a long time. And let me tell you folks, I wasn’t even halfway done with the driveway when I came down with a wicked case of Snowthrower envy. As it stands, I’m probably the only one on my block still wallowing in the evolutionary cesspool of snow wrangling. Bent over with my little green plastic shovel, slowly developing a massive kink in my lower back, I looked like neanderthal man next to my heathy neighbors (aka Mr. & Mrs. Jones), who stood fully erect pushing gently on their high powered snow throwers. To hell with a new G5 or some slick iPod accessories, what I really need is a ‘Two Stage Power Shift Snowthrower‘, with Serrated Drum Augers, and Independent Traction Systems. A memory upgrade got nothing on standard electric start action. Let the shopping begin.

After all the log tossing and snow maneuvering it was time for some good old fashion hibernating and DVD viewing. I got the new remake of The Italian Job, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Not nearly as good as the original Italian Job (one of my personal all-time favorites) but decent hollywood fare. Mos Def has a nice role in the movie, and the mini-cooper action was top notch.