We ended up getting just shy of six inches of snow earlier this week, to go on top of the half inch or so of ice from last week. That's enough to bring this town skidding to a halt, and there was plenty of skidding to go around this week. With the temperature staying well south of freezing none of it is in any hurry to go anywhere and they're forecasting another one to three inches between now and Friday morning.
You know what all that means, right? Snow days! It's been a while since I had any of those but I could definitely get used to it. With so many people already working/schooling from home it's probably not as much fun as it used to be...
Thanks to how my off days and the snow fell, I've only worked one day out of the last seven. That's made for something of a snow daze, the days seem to run together a bit.
The blanket of white that's coated everything for the past week hasn't helped things. I did manage to get the camera out and go wandering a few times but weather conditions kept those fairly short. The first time I went out it was sleeting pretty good, I wound up spending more time getting the ice off my camera than I did shooting. On another jaunt it took all of a half hour before my hands were so cold (even with gloves on) that it was painful to continue holding the camera.
The photo above is from my first stroll in the snow, this was the sight that greeted me when I made it to the main road. It was at this point that I realized that there may be hazards on this adventure that I hadn't anticipated. The darker areas of snow are what the snowplows had tossed aside, judging by how the trash cans had migrated I suspected that it might be a bit unpleasant if one caught me unawares on the sidewalk (there's one under that mess somewhere). Fortunately the park that I was heading for was only a few blocks away, still I kept my ears peeled for the sound of one of those scraper blades.
The photo above is one of the sights that greeted me when I made it to the park. I have lots of mixed feelings about city parks (Does it even count as being in the woods if you can still hear traffic noise?) and I feel like this photo is representative of that.
This next one was good for a chuckle. While I don't much care for LMPD (and I suspect the feeling is mutual at this point), I reserve a special loathing for their tow truck brigade. We've had more than a couple run-ins and they seem to delight in making retrieving your car from the impound lot as difficult and obnoxious as possible. One can hope they're as obnoxious to their coworkers as they are the general public but I kinda doubt that's the case, either way every cruiser they tow makes for one less poor working stiff that has to pay to get their car back from impound.
As I was copying these photos from my SD card to one of my hard drives I realized that it was halfway through the second month of the year and I'd only been out shooting a few times. Cold weather and I don't mix very well so that isn't all that surprising but it makes it more difficult/annoying to come up with new things to write about. I keep meaning to try and be more consistent with taking photos but somehow I never quite manage. Any of y'all ever run into similar issues?
To try and remedy this I've decided to do something new. My plan is to take ten 'daily photos' in addition to my occasional photo adventures. I don't have high expectations in terms of results but I think it'd be a good habit to pick up.
I have the sneaking suspicion that the primary result of that will be lots more cat photos but I'm okay with that. It's not like I don't already take lots of random photos anyway...
For years I've been trying to get shots of cardinals in snow but they seem to know that and hide when I'm out looking for them (the squirrels always did that too when I was out with my 12 gauge). 'Critters in snow' shots were half the reason I was out in such chilly weather but apparently the critters had better (warmer?) things to do. I had to settle for caddies and chevys in snow which was still fun but not quite the same.
That's probably enough rambling for one post, I started writing this last night but it somehow dragged on into this morning. We ended up getting about two more inches of snow last night, think I will keep this daze a going and call into work and take a nap. Y'all stay safe and warm out there!
