Monday, February 2, 2015

Good morning crew,

Welcome to Groundhog Day and the beginning of a new week, and a new month! It's a big day. More importantly, we are only 47 days away from the first day of spring.

After this weekend it can't come too soon for me. Yesterday and last night it snowed over 15 inches. I shoveled three times. The last effort had a tinge of desperation to it. After giving my back a workout on the front walk and the back patio, I recruited the wife to help me with the final assault, the big push; clearing the driveway.

It is only about 550 square feet, which really isn't that much, but add 15 or 16 inches of snow and you have over 800 cubic feet of heavy, wet, slushy material to move by hand. And it had to be done. There was no way our vehicles were getting through that mountain of snow.

The wife and I took turns. Well, we only have one shovel so we had to, but launching 20-pound shovel fulls of snow ten feet through the air onto five-foot high piles really takes it out of a person fast, so we probably would have taken breaks anyway. The project took us an hour, but gasping and groaning we finally finished it. That was about five o'clock last night.

Of course, when I opened the garage door this morning I discovered the snow had piled up about another eight or ten inches over night. But it was nothing that saying a quick prayer and jamming my foot down on the accelerator couldn't overcome.

It's a good thing I didn't go to any Super Bowl parties yesterday. If I hadn't stayed home shoveling all day I never would have gotten through the 20 plus inches of snow that would have accumulated by this morning. Then I would have been forced to take a three-day weekend. And what fun is that?

At least I now I know what I am going to get my wife for Valentine's Day; a second snow shovel!

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
"Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most." --George R. Kirkpatrick

***
"You moon the wrong person at an office party and suddenly you're not 'professional' any more." --Jeff Foxworthy

***
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." --Mark Twain

***
One cold night my furnace died, so I went to my parents' house. In the morning, a neighbor called to tell me that my water pipes had burst and flooded my town house and hers. I raced home--and on the way got a speeding ticket.

Then the furnace repairman arrived and told me he didn't think he had the proper fuse but would check in his truck. Meanwhile, the plumber cut holes in my bathroom wall to locate the leak.

When the furnace repairman returned, he held aloft a fuse.

"I had the right one after all," he said triumphantly. "This must be your lucky day."


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
My husband is wonderful with our baby daughter, but often turns to me for advice. Recently I was in the shower when he poked his head in to ask, "What should I feed Lily for lunch?"

"That's up to you," I replied. "There's all kinds of food.
Why don't you pretend I'm not home?"

A few minutes later, my cell phone rang. I hopped out of the shower to answer it and heard my husband saying, "Yeah, hi, honey. Uh...what should I feed Lily for lunch?"