Hey! No more apologies from this girl for not having a snow worthy of note. This is a snow that would get even New Englanders excited. Day NINE campers, and this baby hasn’t given us a break yet.
Only, might I please say once again, that Portland is just not set up for this kind of winter. If the city even owns plows at all… they are either at the airport, or in emergency centers, or at the very least downtown. We saw a news clip of guys with shovels sitting in the back of a city truck heaped with sand. The truck drove slowly, and the guys shoveled grit onto the snowy street. There are not even enough sand spreaders here!
The airport is totally shut down. Well, basically. 90% of their flights appear to be cancelled. I can’t believe parts of the city are still functioning. But it is! Good on ya, mates!
My supervisor called me last night to say that work would be opening at 10:00am. I checked the federal website this morning (http://oregonfeb.us/) and it told me what I expected to see: Department of Veterans Affairs Benefits Office – closed. Yipes. So glad I didn’t have to get out there and try to hustle myself to work. Moseying around in the snow for fun is one thing, but it would bite to be trying to get to work on time this morning.
Yahoo TriMet! You guys are the champs! Still, busses are getting stuck in snow, even on their snow routes. It’s certainly a noteworthy storm.
Our kitty Pumkin, whom we affectionately call “Big O” has finally decided that it’s yucky out. He’s got a case of cabin fever which actually is worse than ours. He tries going out every hour or so….but can’t find a good route. The snow is now much deeper than him. I tried to shovel him a path to get underneath some hedges, but that’s not exactly what he’s looking for.
No one owns snow shovels, so we’ve been shoveling with heavy old metal dirt shovels. and BROOMS! We’ve been clearing snow with brooms. And when it’s freakin’ 15 inches deep, that’s simply ridiculous.
We’ve decided we’ve been trapped in the house too long. We are going to head out this evening. We’ll bundle up and take whatever busses might arive, and go downtown and take photos of the Made In Oregon sign in the snow. We’ll find a coffee shop open and check out the lights downtown and just soak up the feeling of EVENT, you know? When storms happen, people get a little giddy.
People have been bringing food and helping out travelers stranded in Union Station, and stranded at the airport. That is really lovely. My daughter and I baked piles of cookies because that’s what you do at Christmas. But we don’t need them all. She suggested we take them downtown and give them to homeless people.
It’s an excellent idea – which will help us get them out of here. Maybe we’ll pack our backpacks with cookies tonight, and hand them out in town. Where I work, there are so many people who sleep on the streets. I can’t imagine how they’ve survived this week. It must be horrible.
OK, well that’s the current news from Lake Woebegone– um, I mean from snowy East Portland. Love and smiles!
Conscious Engagement 
Several years ago my wife gave me a snow shovel for my birthday. I’ve only used it two or three times since then.
Thoughtful gift, ha ha! Do you currently live in Deutschland? I always think of that as a place with significant snow. Well, I’ve never again seen a snow like we had in 2008, but I did eventually buy a snow shovel. It’s in excellent condition, as, like yours, it only gets used once or twice a year. Last year, not at all.
Yes, some places in Germany still get lots of snow, but here in Frankfurt we haven’t had much for the last few years.