Sometimes you just need a little push

"God's given me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well."
-- The Shoveler ("Mystery Men")

It snowed a lot today. By early afternoon when I went to work there was a least 6 inches of snow with plenty more on the way. (By the evening, I think we had gotten about a foot.) My apartment building's parking lot had not been plowed at all. There were trucks getting stuck in the parking lot, so I didn't figure that my Saturn stood much of a chance. But the little car that could managed to make it out of the parking lot only to find that the streets had also not been plowed. (The city decided one of the ways it could save money was to scale back the snowplowing budget. Stupidest decision ever.) So driving was a mess. The normally 10 minute drive into work took me an hour. Traffic was backed up, cars couldn't get up the hills (of which there are many in Duluth) and there was just general chaos on the roads. I finally found a place to park and got into work where we soon found out that our newest copy editor couldn't get to work for her first day -- her car was stuck in the snow. So Capt. Dusty McAwesome and I decided to ride to the rescue. Upon seeing that we were leaving, two co-workers asked us to help push their cars out of the snow so they could leave. So the four of us ventured out into the snow. After half an hour or so, we had pushed and shoveled both guys' cars out of the snow. I'm getting so much practice at this, I'm thinking of going into the private sector. Half an hour after that, we had picked up our co-worker and, with only a bit of pushing, gotten back to work.

Speaking of work and the weather, I'm headed out to Norfolk, Va., early next week for an interview at The Virginian-Pilot. A friend of mine, either as encouragement or to cruelly taunt me, sent me the weather report for Norfolk. The comparison for the next several days goes like this:

Duluth
Thursday: -2/-28 (Wind chill Thursday and Friday night expected to be about 50 below)
Friday: -12/-23
Saturday: -9/-19
Sunday: -3/-14

Norfolk
Thursday: 72/62
Friday: 65/32
Saturday: 48/32
Sunday: 49/33

I can't decide if Mother Nature is doing this just to screw with me before I leave or if it's simply an encouragement because, really, humans shouldn't live in places where you can die in 10 minutes outside. This is weather for polar bears, not people.