Snow is pounding us in the tri-state area!

I left New York about 15 years ago. Definitely don't miss shoveling and driving on icy roads. Stay safe!

This is reminding me of a Monty Python sketch

luxury.......

I give you....the 4 Yorkshiremen


Right, you can't get a good glass of Chateau du Chasseur, ey, Josiah?

Hey- Right there ya', Hobodeiah.

Who'd a' thought 40 years ago we' be sitting here drinking chateau du chasseur?

Aye.

Them's days you'd be glad to have the prize of a cup o'tea.

Aye. A cuppa' cold tea.

Not milk or sugar!

Or tea...

in a cracked cup and all.

We never had a cup. We used to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

Best we could manage was to suck on a piece o'damp cloth.

But you now we were happy those days, but we were poor.

Because we were poor.

My old dad used to say to me: "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son."

He was right! I was happier then. We had nothing-- use to live in a tiny old, tumbled down house with great holes in' err roof.

A house? You were lucky to have a house! We used to sleep in one room, 26 of us. And half the floor was missing. We were all huddled in one corner, for fear of falling.

You were lucky to have a room. We used to live in corridors.

Oh...We used to dream 'a livin' in a corridor. Woulda' been a palace for us. We used to live in an old watertank on top of a rubbish tip. Got Woked up every mornin by havin the lot of the rotten fish dumped all over us.

House? Why woulda say house? It were only a hole in the ground, covered by a couple foot o torn canvas. But they were house to us!

We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go livin in lake.

You were lucky to have a lake.There were 150 of us, livin in shoebox at middle o' motorway.

Cardboard box?

Nay.

You're lucky. We lived for three months in a rolled up newspaper in a septic tank. We used to hadta get up a'six in the morning, clean da newspaper, eat a crusta stale bread, go to work down the mill, for a 14 hour day, week in week out for 6 cents a month, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt.

Luxury. We used to hafta get 'out the lake, 3 am, clean the lake, eat a handful 'o hot gravel, work 20 hours a day at mill, for a penny a month, and dad would beat us about the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky.

Well o course we had it tough. We used to have to get up outta shoebox, in middle of night, and lick the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked at mill for 24 hours for a penny a year, When we got home, our dad would slash it in two with bread-knife.

Right.. I used to get up in the morning at night at half-past-ten at night, half an hour before I went to bed, Eat a lump of freezing cold poison, work 28 hours a day at mill, and pay da mill owner to let us work there. And when I went home our dad used to murder us in cold blood, each night, and dance about on our graves, singing hallelujah.

Yah, you try an tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you...

That was the inspiration for my post. My favorite Python skit.

Is that a Sasha Grey quote?

Growing up in Montreal, I made a lot of money shoveling. We would charge $3 or $4 for a whole driveway. 20 years later, I move to Vancouver (where there's rarely snow). One year we get 1/2" of snow and two kids knock on the door looking to shovel the walkway up to the front door: they wanted $20 each!!! Needless to say I took a pass and spent about 6 minutes doing it myself. The demise is not the snowblower, but unrealistic wage expectations.

Another 20 years later, I am now in Philly and just had the same storm last night. At least I got to use my snowblower. As a Good Samaritan, after I was done with my yard, I tackled my neighbor's snowbank caused by the plow. On my last pass, I hit a large rock and it stopped blowing. 🤬 Went home and pulled a grapefruit-size rock out. Turns out I tore two drive belts: $50 for parts and now I have a new project. That’ll teach me to be a nice guy. No good deed goes unpunished I guess.

Hardly newsworthy, it’s like that every day of the year, well apart from March 11th.

Winter Is Coming
(Northern hemisphere)