When I left you Friday morning it was still snowing but only later did it turn into larger flakes and and a heavier fall. It looked like were were going to get the amount of snow predicted for today. It was supposed to stop around 5pm-7pm.
Ava liked it so much she didn't want to come in. I closed the patio door and let her decide when she was finished. About five minutes later she was standing the door completely covered with snow.
This photo was taken earlier when I posted a blog post. You can use it to compare to what I saw at 2:30pm.
The dogs and hounds had all be fed. They had some nice cold water I had poured into their large bowl and sat that in the garage. As usual after their lunch they all went outside to relieve themselves. When they got back we all headed for an afternoon siesta. It ended up being almost two and a half hours long. It was some good rest for all of us.
After I get up and am walking Ava toward the patio door to let her out, I see not one but two AT&T trucks. They might have been here to work on the neighbor's AT&T Fiber line that would have been put back up on their new utility pole last night ... or were they here from my AT&T work order I got when I called them again in early December?
They were out of the truck when I walked through the living room and were glancing over in the direction of my utility pole out back. So I assume they were here today to finish their job from last July ... to hang their spliced box back up high on their cable.
You remember possibly them leaving the box of the new fiber cable spliced to their old fiber cable still attached to the pole? They ordered 660' of new fiber cable to replaced the damaged cable last July. Squirrels were chewing through the insulation causing outages. The tech told me they only got a spool of 600' so they were a little short getting to the pole.
You can see the two vertical cables hanging in the center of the photo. I threw the box over into the bushes on the berm so I would not mow over it last summer. That fallen tree trunk and tree limbs were added last Sunday night during the ice storm. Will they bring their chain saws?
By the time I poured myself a small 7.8 oz can of Coke and walked back to the computer room, both AT&T trucks were gone. I walked out to the side door on my garage and looking out the door window I did not see any boot prints walking through the snow in my side yard, so they must have looked at the job required from the street ... where they could not see their hanging spliced cable.
The highlight of the day was this new Jeep SUV. It probably doesn't come with all-terrain tires and if it did, then this car sucks in the snow. First it was backed down into the driveway on the right and couldn't make it out of the driveway. A few people in that house grabbed some snow shovels and went to work shoveling what they could from the driveway, but there was solid ice below the snow so I was pretty shocked it had made it to the street.
The interesting point of this evolution was the Jeep could not make it up the slight incline near my mailbox. He was putting down two large squares of rubber mat for her tires to grip but with the passenger side front tire spinning she wasn't making much progress. She was moving one square mat at a time. Finally by turning the wheels to her right, they gripped the mat, swerved toward my side yard and driveway as she accelerated ... then back to the street and she was off to the races. I say "she" because I saw the driver get in the car.
Of course she had to build up speed going downhill before curving left, to make it up a steeper hill up ahead. She did that with the backend of the Jeep fishtailing around each turn. The last thing I saw was red brake lights as she turned to the right in front of the red brick house, where the street will straighten out to the next stop sign. It is sad that tree or at least half of it will be cut down. I know the tree trunk on the right side is snapped in to and is hanging by a thread.
You can tell by the top of the fence we got a good amount of snow on top of what we already had. Later yesterday afternoon a county snow removal truck loaded with the Indiana salt/sand mixture cleared the street but buried every driveway entrance that people had cleared or plowed. I should be able to get out of my drive this morning without much problem.
Not much was done yesterday except sit and watch the snow fall. It finally stopped around 5pm just as they predicted. I could see the real contour of the backyard, all the low spots, the different areas that were not level. I was also happy I didn't hear that infamous cracking sound of trees before they fell. The hounds and dogs did not mind the snow and went in and out many times during the day and a few times last night.
I let them decide on their own when they wanted to come in, since they never did when I called them ... even with the temps were in single digits a couple of nights ago.
Now Henry isn't the tallest hound or dog in the world, short basset legs but you can still see how deep the snow is on the patio with him and then Watson standing next to him. I plan to get out there today and shovel the snow off the patio. I am heading to the pet store to get some salt approved for pets and clear the ice off the patio. I am not going to wait for the sun to melt it because there are not enough warm sunny days ahead for that to melt on its own.
I think I saw those "Muddy Mats" at their store. Facebook knows I have dogs and a muddy yard (how do they know that???) so they are flooding me with the Muddy Mats advertisements in my news feed. They look like they work from what I have seen on their videos.
Every time Ava went out, I would catch her laying in the snow. You can see by her nose she is tracking something underneath the snow. She also got a lot of exercise yesterday by sprinting from one side of the yard to the other and back across the patio. None of the others were interested in chasing her so she just ran by herself doing nonstop laps around the yard.
No the snow is not quite that deep. There is a small hole in the yard there, thanks to Ava. Evidently Watson had found something interesting enough to bury his face in the snow to find it.
Walter only went out when he needed to and not to play around. He was enjoying the new heat the house had and we had to get ready for the college football game on Friday night.
Watson, next to me ... Henry and Ava thought the game was pretty exciting. They were in their normal seats for watching the game.
It might get a little over freezing today with a little sunshine. I hope to get the snow cleared on the patio, driveway, sidewalk and porch for that ice to start melting. It is also good exercise shoveling snow, especially since this is the wet and heavy kind.
The house feels too hot during the day and I keep lowering the thermostat. I woke up in the middle of the night too hot while I still was using the sleeping bag for low temps. I guess tonight I can go back to the normal comforter since the polar vortex is over.
5am came early this morning in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.
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