Off to work.
Great OP Spaz. I hear ya about the everything shuts down for snow and ice. That’s here in Jawja too. I grew up and went to school in Nawth Jawja. There was always snow and/or ice a few times each winter. Pretty much everybody just stayed home. I remember the annual Athens ice storms. Athens as in UGA Athens, not the Yurpean one. The ice would happen and every thing stopped until it thawed out. Then, we’d have a few days of melted ice during the day which would freeze back up at night cause the temps were below freezin’, makin’ everything slippery in the mornin’s, but not so slick people couldn’t get to work or school. Then it’d thaw out durin’ the day and freeze back up at night… rinse, wash, repeat for about a week. Fun times.
I did drive from Cincinnati to some little town in southern Indiana in snow and ice once though. I was proud of myself. Also, it was kinda stoopid for lil’ ol’ southern USAer me to do it, but it was for work and I’m dedicated. Ok, stoopid. I should have known better from early that mornin’ on. See, I was supposed to fly into Louisville, KY and drive all of fifty miles up the interstate to the small town in Indiana (can’t remember the name of the town!). However, there was an ice storm that iced in the airport. I couldn’t fly into Indianapolis either due to the same ice storm. I could, however, fly into Cincinnati and drive about 75 miles to get there, so that’s what I did. Not a lot of ice (the storm went north) but lots of snow. On pretty much a two lane road through southern Indiana. Took me two and a half hours to drive that 75 miles, but I did it. When I got there, I checked into my motel, called the people I was there to see on Monday mornin’ (they were shocked, shocked I say, to find out I’d actually gotten there!) and called a bunch of people back home to tell ‘em my drivin’ adventure cause I knew they’d be impressed. Ok, most of ‘em said that was pretty stoopid and I should have postponed the trip. Shows what they know! I then proceeded to go to the only place in town that was open for food purposes (I was starvin’!), which was Pizza Hut. Good thing it was right next to my motel. I needed several beerverages after that little trip. 
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Caffienation in progress and soon work purtification must commence though I don’t really feel like goin’ to work. Go I must though, so go I shall.
Later Y’all!
what she said.
who taht’s a lot of read this early in the morning. I’ll be back later to catch it all up.
ciao for niao
Which actually happens to be the best thing you could do, as I was told after that time that one of the back tires blew up on my ancient R9 just as I turned to enter the factory’s parking lot. I raised both feet, did the kind of out-loud prayer that most non-Spaniards insist in calling cursing and did my best to turn the car so it wouldn’t hit the concrete pillar head-on. It skidded against it instead. Then I just stared at my left arm and leg, arm and leg, arm and leg, amazed that nothing of mine was broken.
When I finally was able to respond to the fellows asking “are you all right? Did you get hit?” what I said was “it isn’t broken! I can’t believe nothing’s broken!”
The paint-and-bodywork bill ate a month of my salary, but the motor and myself didn’t have nothing broken, look, arm moves!
I’m working near Madrid now. We had 5 minutes of silence outside at noon, because of the political murder last Friday; Air Infantry’s HQs are next door and we could hear them playing something (I think it’s their hymn) at funereal speed.
For some reason the email here doesn’t want to talk to my gmail. That will make getting to the flat kind of interesting since the dirs were sent to my gmail; I hope my Tomtom knows the street I have to go to. I like having Tontón say “in 800 meters, make a right…” plus it doesn’t require me to read my handwriting while driving.
I thought Beebs’ a dude… 
As trumpeted here before, I grew up in northern Indiana, very near the same South Bend LiLi is trying to visit. The area rivals Buffalo NY for snow dumping and ice storms, so I tend to laugh when you guys moan about crappy weather. Especially now, where the sighting of 1 snowflake sends the entire Hampton Roads region into a panic.
In other news, while I had a 0 call shift Saturday night, I also took a call before that for a guy who got hisself coldcocked by a beer bottle. He was drunk, and such a jackass that we decided he had it coming. I hate drunk patients.
Taxen are done, and VunderKind’s financial aid is, too.
In other news about my rugrat, remember how I unloaded about Future Daughter-in-Law and her biodad? A miracle has happened…
A recap for those who’ve slept since I told this last: FDiL was being raised by her mom and stepdad, who died when FDiL was about 14. She went to Florida to live with an aunt, and they didn’t get along too well. FDiL’s biodad made a play for custody, even though he had not seen FDiL since she wore diapers, and won. Turns out biodad is a drunken, abusive jerk who wanted FDiL in the house so he could suck dry her Social Security money.
FDil got out of the house and went to live with stepdad, who is for all practical purposes her father. Biodad had her arrested as a runaway. My inlaws are tight with FDiL and stepdad, BTW.
So here comes the miracle. Stepdad has Stage 4 lung cancer, and is winding down fast. My MiL and SiL have been plotting with stepdad to have a guardianship set up for FDiL should stepdad get to the point he could not function (so far he still can, but the cancer is taking it’s toll). It’s a race to see if FDiL reaches 18 in mid-May before stepdad checks out for good.
Biodad has been telling FDiL her Social Security ends at 18, and there’s no way she can go to college because he won’t send her. Patent bullshit, BTW. Out of the blue this weekend, biodad gave in and signed off on the guardianship. :eek: FDiL will move in with SiL sometime soon, probably when the end is near for stepdad. It won’t do to have FDiL and VunderKind under the same roof. 
MiL and SiL are going to take the papers to Probate Court this morning and file them, cutting biodad out for good. FDiL was also set straight on SS survivor’s bennies, and told in no uncertain terms to get her tookus to the financial aid office at IUPUI about SS and financial aid in general. She’s going to college, dammit, if the entire family has to hogtie her and take her there ourselves.
What happened? It didn’t make the Drudge Report, so I have no clue.
I want to know how to pronounce “Snoqualmie,” kai.
swampy, I grew up in Kentucky on the Ohio River between Louisville and Cincinnati. I bet I know the town you’re talking about … Madison? Richmond? Columbus, Ind.? Fun to see an anecdote about the very region I’m from.
We had a hideous ice storm in February 2003 and I was without power for a week. I was right in the middle of separating from my first husband, so I felt like God and the entire world had abandoned me. So I went home to Mommy. School was cancelled for my children, but thank heavens for laptops. I could still do my work from another city. While my personal life went to hell. But I’m MUCH happier now! 
Sledding pictures from this weekend to come.
Morning all! Last week was a great week for me. There is no way this week can live up to it! Except I get paid tomorrow, which is nice!
Great OP Spaz. The year I turned 16, we had 2 ice storms, so my Dad taught me how to turn out of a skid. That’s not something someone can tell you how to do. You have to experience it first hand.
I found a Mexican grocery here in Apex that carries MexiCoke and MexiPepsi. Oh sweet mother. A year round source of nectar. I don’t have to wait for Passover and scour the lands. Joy!
Back to work. Ugh.
Morning, everyone!
Qiuick post- QD, Driving Husband, and Lazy Husband were here yesterday. My kitchen is very cleaning. Nat needs me, bye!
I hate stupid people.
Back to work.
Great OP. I have been told repeatedly that the worst snow tires are still better in the winter than the best all-season tires. However, I am a slow learner. Nevertheless, this year (after driving through 35+ New England winters), I went out and bought new snow tires for the first time. Of course, it took a 5 hour commute in a blizzard in December (for a drive that shouldn’t have been longer than 45 minutes) for me to see the light. Life will be more boring, that’s for sure, but I think it was a good move.
My most eerie drive was one winter when I was in college, coming home from UMass on Rte 2. I had promised my girl friend’s roommate that I’d give her a ride home (she lived one town away from me). We were supposed to leave at noon, before the storm. She was one of those people who just can’t stick to a schedule, and it ended up being 6 pm by the time we left, just as things were getting interesting.
I had a ten year old '65 Chevy Malibu with sausage casings for tires (that alone would have told you I was a college student). The weather at that point was mostly rain, but it was changing over. At one point my car just shut down on a hill on Rte 202. A guy stopped to help, sprayed my engine with wire drier (something was shorting out) and ended giving me a push with his Suburban to a service station. I looked at his plates as he left - my good Samaritan was from Georgia and was better equipped for the snow than I was. I bought a couple of cans of wire drier and drove off to Rte 2.
At this point the weather changed to snow, and the road was icing up. No trucks had been out to sand or salt. I was fine as long as I kept going, and kept in my lane. Switching lanes got me out of the tracks of the car in front of me; I only tried it once. At one point someone put on brakes ahead of me, so I did the same. My car gracefully turned 90 degrees to block both lanes of traffic. Thank God that the people behind me had better tires than I did.
Driving wasn’t as scary after I got back on track, but it got strange all the same. I only had an AM radio, and we started to pull in radio stations from as far away as Texas. We’d turn the dial and be amazed at where the station was located. Later, when I got home I located where all the stations were, and it was along a fairly straight line from my car to the station in Texas.
By the time we got close enough to Boston, things were better. The storm was over and the roads were clean. I drove her to her house in Lexington and we stayed in the car talking for a while. I thought that she’d be ticked off at me for how scary the drive was, but she clearly wasn’t. I really think she wanted me to kiss her. I was seeing her roommate, and things were quite serious, so I didn’t do it. But all these years later I realize that that is the second lesson I took away from that drive - Never turn down the opportunity for a stolen kiss.
Bother. ‘Very clean’. And my fridge has been organized.
Another MMPer in North Carolina?
The usual, sadly. ETA normally marks every election (national ones even more so) with a murder or two. This year it was an ex-city councilor for Mondragón, a town which is pretty much synonimous with “industry jobs” and which for many years was synonimous with “lots of unemployment due to industry loss (partly ETA-related)”. The guy was a tollbooth operator on the highway. He leaves wife, two daughters (20 and 17) and a son (4 or 5). The eldest daughter read a family communicate in which among other things she said that her father had always been an open-faced man and the masked fuckers who killed him are “nothing but cowards, they’ve got no balls.”
This “custom” of ETA’s is one of the reasons everybody in Spain (even if now they claim not) at first thought that ETA had been responsible for March-11. Heck, the jailed of ETA celebrated it, and they don’t celebrate hits from other terrorist groups…
People who claim they never thought 11M was ETA remind me of the folks who claim their whole family was in the Maquis (anti-Franco guerrilas who don’t seem to have done much at all, really). If all the ones who claim that were telling the truth, then one of my grandpas and Franco kept the whole of Spain in shackles single-handed :p. And after grandpa’s death, Franco did it all on his lonesome.
Completely unrelated thing, although related to the OP: in Spain we don’t use different-season tires. We use chains. Then again, there’s a (early Reconquista) King of Navarra whose nickname comes… from having invented a easy-to-make kind of boots. We generally have the idea that the best thing you can do in snow is stay in, and also the weather to do so.
Afternoon all! Seems quite appropriate that I’m only going to manage a drive-by this time round. I think the weekend of birthday celebrations must be catching up with me.
Yays, boos, hugs, appropriate and inappropriate responses to whoever needs them!
Great OP, Spaz
Hi there new kids, ** cleo** and ** Bratti**! Jump right in anywhere. Welcome to the coolest spot in the SDMB!
Rigs, I feel you on the insomnia.
kai, what is banya?
Yes, beebs, it is.
That’s awesome news Bob!
A few weeks ago I was driving south on 41 very early in the morning. It was below zero that morning and foggy! There is a reason they call it black ice. The road looked clean, but I felt a few little skids, so I knew to go very, very slow. There was no traffic to speak of, thankfully, when I started to fishtail. I just hung on and rode it out, whee! Og was that fun! Then I got flung into the snow filled ditch on the right. That was not fun. I was facing oncoming traffic, though, so I got to watch others do the same thing. It took an hour for the tow truck to get there and pull me out so I could get where I was going.
I need some good stories about online dating. I met someone on OKcupid last week, and we have been IMing for hours at a time all weekend.
I’m meeting her for coffee tomorrow, and I and nervous as hell.
I thought you knew that already! 
:::waves at VunderBob:::
A few weeks ago on Marketplace there was a story about all-season vs winter tires. They talked to some tire expert guys and did some test drives on a frozen and snowy track. It was startling the difference even the el-cheapo winter tires make. They explained that basically the winter tires have a rubber made of a slightly different composition that stays uhm… I want to say more supple in the cold though I don’t think that was the term they used. Basically they hugged the road better and that when it gets below freezing you should switch to winters. Even if there is no snow or ice, they hold the pavement better in the cold. When it warms up again you should switch back. They also said you should not have just two winter tires (like some people do) all four should be winters.
I don’t have much driving experience. I’m getting more though, in anticipation of taking the test in June (when I can take the license test, since that’s when I passed the learners test last year). Last night was kinda freaky though because I was doing so good (basically driving myself home). At one point when I was nearly home, I had to switch lanes. So of course I check my mirrors and shoulder check, nothing there that I can see and I do another quick glance before I start pulling over, still nothing… next thing I know Dan (the guy acting as our teacher, my friend’s fiance… she’s taking the test on Saturday) he’s taking a deep breath in and there are lights in my mirror. He tells me I should’ve looked but I did, and my friend (who was in the back seat) backs me up cuz she saw me check. For a moment I was freaked though, he seemed to come from nowhere.
But there were no accidents, and I still need to work on parking (I’m not bad at parallel, I’m not that good at perpendicular though… need to work on my judgement there) and I drove on three fairly major city roads at night and did fine merging. It wasn’t really busy, which helped.
Morning!
Spaz, that must’ve been a mighty scary experience. Stories like these are one of the reasons I never got around to learning to drive and am a little cranky about being forced into getting my license this spring (well, not really forced… but when your choices to get to work are a 45 min commute by car or a 2 hr commute by transit, which do you pick?)
Another fun day of screwin’ the pooch here in Mr Roger’s Neighbourhood, but on the bright side (quite literally), the sun has come out to play today. I think I’m going to venture outside for a looooong leisurely shopping excursion over my lunch break - I need me some galoshes, because it’s been a very slushy winter thus far, and I’m really tired of ending up with cold wet feet all the time.
I didn’t even mention the time I skidded on black ice on US-64, nearly went down a very steep, tree-covered ditch, and had to wait an hour for a nice old man’s son to come to drive the tractor to pull my car out of the ravine. The old man couldn’t drive the tractor because he had just had hip replacement surgery.
Observation this morning went well. I stopped by the grocery store on the way back and got the fixin’s for a chicken-green bean-cream of mushroom soup bake for this eventide. Now I work on my thesis some more.
ETA: Also, snow tires and chains are illegal in NC. We have weak asphalt to go with our weak winters. That means once we hit ice, we’re screwed. Stay home and have some cocoa.