Shovel it! (Updated twice....)

(Click image to go to pic at RandiArt blog) I have been lucky in most of my previous trips back to the US to miss the big storms -- snow and otherwise. I thought my luck was holding this trip. Arrived on the 21st, just after a small snow storm left 2-4 inches in parts of Boston. Then the news for the rest of the week featured a major snow storm that hit the midwest -- including parts of Texas and the southwest that had not seen snow for the past 80 years. New England missed that one.... We have been watching the weather for the past 24 hours because our daughter is driving down to Philadelphia for the MLA today, and it actually looked okay on the forecast. Flurries early today, they said, and maybe 4-7 in the Boston area tonight (Sunday night), but that seemed okay. Then we awoke to something else altogether. We looked out at 730am and saw a couple of inches already on the ground, and by 8am it was really starting to come down hard. Heading to the gym to work out, it was obvious this was no flurry. Yet the Boston radio station was still saying only flurries, and 4-7 inches tonight. By the time we were heading home at 930, there were already 5 or 6 inches on the ground, and I sit here procrastinating while it gets even deeper. I know I have to get out there and shovel -- if for no other reason than to keep ahead of this storm. Looking at the radar weather maps on the net, I can see what the problem is -- the storm clouds seems to be located along a band running north from just around where we are up through Maine. In short, we are about to get hit with about twice the snow that they are predicting for Boston. Living next to the Atlantic and just on the jet stream line does funny things for us... Well, not so funny. Just came in from shoveling the snow; Randi has been at it for at least half an hour before I get to it, and much of what she's done is already covered with fresh snowfall.... I tackle the area around the driveway, not because it snows any more there, but because the city snow ploughs (notice, using my UK spelling!) tend to bury us in unless we move the snow at the end of the driveway out into the street. So it is a matter of shoveling out in order to avoid being shoveled in... Get that! It is now noon, and it looks like we are at flurry level snowfall, so maybe there will be a break in the action -- long enough to go for coffee and a movie. Yesterday we saw “Closer,” a Mike Nichols film set in London with Julia Roberts, Jude Law, et al. Good cast, some good acting. Nice to see scenes of London, and especially got a kick out of the scenes at the Heathrow Renaissance Hotel, which was one of the bigger disappointments of our own trip there last year (Marriott folks should be embarrassed to be associated with that particular hotel). As for the movie, I thought the film itself was plotless and pointless -- or at least I was clueless as to where the story was going. Reminded me of some of the films of the 1960s and 1970s with Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis and Richard Burton and everyone having dinner parties and screaming at each other.... Don't know what we will see today. Not much interesting out there. My son, who seems to have eclectic but lower end tastes in films, liked “Spanglish” and “Meet the Fockers” -- but neither has much attraction for me. Might go see “Phantom”, but only because Ciarán Hinds is in it -- he is brother of a colleague.... Otherwise, will be a lazy Sunday like all the others, only this time I get to read the NY Times rather than yesterday's Guardian book review.... UPDATE: Never did get to that movie, and plans for going anywhere tomorrow (Monday) seem a bit far fetched. The snow keeps coming down, and they predict that by the time it ends we will have as much as 18 inches. Looks like all my exercise will be with a shovel....