Snow Day

Today reminded me a lot of a day two years ago, when a heavy snow storm inspired me to skip work.



Except this time I was snowed in with my kids and Corinna was out of town.



I have to say, my kids aren't as much fun as they once were. Zero interest in making snow angels, building a snowman, even going out in the white stuff.



Of course, they're sixteen and seventeen years old, so I guess that's normal.



I played with my camera a bit, trying to cope with the glare of the snow. I made this video with shots made with the interval timer on my D7000 set to take a shot every fifteen seconds. I'd shoveled out to the car earlier to get my tripod and in hopes that my boots were there.



My boots Bermuda Triangulated some time since my Joplin attempt, the last time I had occasion to wear them.



I didn't really want another self-portrait but since the girls wouldn't come out to play, I experimented with dragging the shutter on myself. Without the flash, my sweater was a black blotch and my face was heavily shadowed. I set the exposure to be under by a stop or two and then fired the flash.



I'm not much looking forward to tomorrow morning. The school district cancelled Friday but being a one-man department I can't probably extend this into a four day weekend. I know my desk was pretty caught up when I left Wednesday, I made sure it was because I knew Thursday was maybe going to be like this.



I'm not sure when or if the city will blade my street, but at least it's downhill to get out to the main roads. Those should be well salted and bladed clean by morning.



Coming home tomorrow night, maybe I'll have to do like a couple of my neighbors did today and park around the corner and hike in.

Postscript

From what I can tell, Kansas City, Missouri still has a policy that snow removal on side streets will be done by June. I lived in the Old Northeast for five years, and the one time I got angry that they hadn't plowed Elmwood days after a storm and called the city I was told to be serious, Elmwood wasn't a major artery. A customer in the shop said his homeowners association contracts for private snow removal in his neighborhood since the city won't do it, and charges him accordingly in dues. That really bothers me, because snow removal from public roads is about as basic and fundamental as city services get. When I was growing up, even the side streets got cleaned off pretty quickly in Overland Park (I think they still do), but the sales tax back then was about half what it is today in KCMO. Not having grown up on the Missouri side, I don't know what it was like there circa 1977, but I know that today the sales tax in KCMO is roughly 10% (it's under 9% officially, but they tack on 2% with 'restaurant meals' and I think they sneaky-pete some other bumps in there for special districts and so on), yet anyone who wants to be able to drive to and from their own house has to pay for snow removal out of pocket.

Sure, things cost more today, but sales tax is naturally indexed—it's a percentage based on what stuff costs. The worst part is, I know KCMO could do it if they wanted to because they did two years ago when Mark Funkhauser was running for re-election and we had a storm almost identical to this. I met the guy once, and he's not Mr. Personality, but he struck me as a very smart and honest guy—I really can't imagine such a character getting elected mayor in a major city, in fact. I suspect he really believed delivering city services would get him reelected, and now that this theory has been filed alongside his way dumber theory, that it was a good idea to pick a fight about bringing his wife to work, no future Kansas City mayor will make the mistake of squandering resources on passable roads.

I worried that KCK, where I now reside, maybe approached snow removal the same half-assed way. I didn't remember them ignoring the streets after the blizzard two years ago but we didn't have winter last year, so I thought maybe I'd forgotten. I was prepared upon arriving in the vicinity of home to find a parking lot on a major street and hike in (my Scion xB gets the worst traction of any car I've ever owned when it comes to winter weather—the only real knock I have against an otherwise stellar vehicle). To my delight, I was able to drive right up to my driveway and after blasting through a little snow berm made by the plows, park in the driveway.