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| Credit: Aaron Brackney |
If you've kept up with the U.S. news this week, you know two things: (1) Newt Gingrich is still to "values" what a ten-gallon sack of live tapeworms is to a recipe for Lobster Thermidor, and (2) Seattle got socked with more snow in two days than we usually get in a year.
Although Elizabeth and I were effectively immobilized here atop the crest of our West Seattle ridge surrounded by hills worthy of a Jamaican bobsled team, we were well provisioned and experienced no significant difficulties.
Well, there was that one thing:
Wednesday's fine blanketing of new-fallen snow has by now become, after hours of light freezing rain, that afternoon's solid encasement in ice. So today I spent some quality muscle-time chipping and shoveling a mountain of ice off our front steps.
Just as I was wearily leaning the shovel near the front door, an enormous passenger liner hove into view, moving at top speed. It struck my mountain of shoveled ice, capsized, and broke in two. The scream of wrenched metal! The shrieks and lamentations of tumbling bodies! Down, down it slid with eerie grace into the snow near where Kai peed on a bush just a few hours earlier. And yet the band played on. A pitiful few lifeboats, some only half full of wailing women and children, managed to break away and row down 41st Ave. toward the more traveled depths of Andover Street and possible rescue. The last thing I saw was Leonardo DiCaprio sinking into the lawn. I would have offered him a rope or the shovel handle or something, but just then, from the kitchen, I heard the kettle for the hot chocolate. I feel kind of bad about that, but, after all, needs must.
Now, although I didn't have the expected difficulty of getting my car started, I still gotta hire somebody to clean up the lawn by hauling away all those deck chairs.
