Robosnowplough

For those who want to keep the neighbourhood kids from making a couple of bob during the winter, we present robosnowplough, which not only clears your pavement of (not very deep) snow, but poops ice cubes. This is supposed to be a bonus.

I'll refrain from calling this a "cool" idea.

Snow Day III

It's the winter that never ends at Chez Szondy. I thought we were past the worst by last Sunday, but the temperatures remained at below five degrees of frost and yesterday morning we were slammed with another snowfall that made the road impassable.

Worse, both of our motor cars are now hors de combat. The Cruiser gave up the ghost two days ago when the cold became too much for the engine and now all I can get out of it is a sullen, battery-draining growl. I'd charge it off the Honda, but when the power went out for a few hours yesterday I decided to go into town for supplies, only to have the car slide ingloriously backwards down the hill, where it now rests marooned in the cul-de-sac by the whippet fancier's house.

I've learned my lesson. Next year I'm laying in a couple of cords of firewood, a barrel of emergency water, a well-stocked wine cellar and a couple of hundred weight of pemmican.

Update: We finally got out! Now to explore this strange, new world.

Snow Day II

According to the local transport department, major roads in the area are more or less open, but that's as maybe at Chez Szondy, where the road is an ice rink and we're socked in by about eight inches of the white stuff. That's the joy of living in the foothills; every inch of snow in the lowlands gets multiplied by four up here.

Accordingly, we will be initiating emergency winter protocols: Crackling fires, snow angels, cocoa, cozy books, lap rugs and Carl the Cattle Dog snoozing on the hearth.

It's Hell up here.

Snow Day

I had to go into town today and then spent six hours getting home after a sudden snow storm hit, forcing my wife, daughter, dog and self to detour miles out of our way to Monroe, where I had to buy and install the first pair of tyre chains that I'd ever encountered in my life so we could get home-- which we barely did.

Not only did I have the joy of putting greasy chains on with bare hands, but I also had to deal with walking the extremely confused dog in a car park in a blizzard, hunting for the cell phone that I lost during that walk, calming an hysterical four-year old who had to go potty, but refused to use anything other than the one at home, and a wife who had her own toilet emergency when we got home and left me to put the car in the garage, but neglected to tell me that the parking break was on, which would have explained why I was having so much trouble getting traction and why there was that nasty burning smell.

That is why I feel we need a cheese shop sketch.