SNOW.......And Cold!

My first update since October and it's a kvetch - those who know me shouldn't be too surprised, after all, bitching is one of the things I do extremely well.

Nasty week here, -32 to -34C for overnight lows and daytime highs only in the -24 to -27C range. Huge dump of snow yesterday. Not nice weather at all, and by Friday we'll only be warmed up to a high of -17. This isn't too unusual, traditionally November and late January/early February are when we have our coldest cold snaps. It's just fucking miserable, that's all.

The groundskeepers here at the complex are the laziest sods on the planet - they have no notion of what shoveling snow is, if it's too light to clean with the snowblower they use (are you ready for this) a leaf blower to "clear" the walks. I use the term "clear" loosely, they don't come near clearing the walking surfaces. I had to call the management company today to warn them that, if the steps up from the parking lot aren't properly dug out to bare concrete, someone will sue after falling. That's how unsafe those steps are. I learned that the head of the grounds crew told the office they weren't going to clear snow (which had my screen door almost blocked shut) until tomorrow because it's too cold today to work outdoors. Excuse me?

I had to bundle up and go out today to plug in the car's block heater. I wore my new fleece-lined waterproof and windproof snow pants, my big Merrell boots, earmuffs, a hoodie with the hood pulled up and my Lowe Alpine shell over that, along with Force 10 monster gloves. The Lowe has a different pocket configuration than the other two shells I wear in the winter. As a result, while I was clearing the snow off the car, I managed to drop my keys into the drifts of snow around the car. Can you say panic? House keys, car keys, all somewhere under the churned up foot-and-a-half white stuff. Luckily I found them before I turned into a gibbering idiot or froze my fingers digging for them. Whew!

Made the mistake of looking in the crawl space off the loft today - there is snow piled up in there. The two open spots where there are vents of some kind on the roof allow precipitation in. At least with it being so cold all week, I can let this problem slide until Wednesday, when I will have to move the things in the snow-targeted area, scoop the snow into pans and such, and set out containers to catch any further snow. Naturally, the causative issue can't be addressed until spring. Thank the Deities that roof repairs go on the condo association's tab and not the condo owner's.

And yet more home repair woes - the oven won't heat. Both top and bottom elements are dead. I tried replacing the fuses, but that made no difference. Boyfriend gave me the number of his appliance guy, whom I will call when I get around to it. If it's just a matter of new elements, fine, but it may be something that's not fixable, and that will mean getting a new range. That being said, the burners work, and I do have the toaster/convection oven, so all I can't cook is one of my giant pans of lasagne. I had to replace my coffee grinder last Friday, too.....let's see, that's 3 repair issues - things come in threes - I hope!!!!!!!

Now for some good news - I am doing very well with my postop recovery. I am going to physiotherapy religiously, and should be back at work three weeks from tomorrow. After living with pain for so many years, it's amazing what an improvement it is to be relatively pain-free. Not being able to bend and touch my toes is a small price to pay for feeling this comfortable - and sane.

I'll try to update more often, I promise.