I've had it with weather that the locals don't know how to handle. I'm from a tiny town in the NW corner of Indiana - very close to the border (and thus Chicago). We get TONS of inclement weather and more snow in a day than some folks in NC have seen in their lifetimes. So I really don't understand why folks down here can't figure out how to remove the relatively tiny amount of snow and ice we get from the roadways.

Today alone they're reporting that there have been over 1,000 traffic accidents. Now, it seems to me that if the state/county/city doesn't know how to REMOVE the snow/ice, that folks would realize this and also realize that they don't know how to DRIVE on said snow/ice. They should just stay home. But they don't. The result is that the universe has a few less living people today.

But I guess I can't say much because Tina and I tried to go out today (she's staying with me for security purposes). She called her office and found out that it was scheduled to open on a two hour delay. At 9am, I went downstairs and started shoveling the driveway. I cleared the bulk of the ice from her car and the drive and when my lungs felt like they were going to burst, I went back indoors.

So at about 10:30am, we tried to leave home. We got off the driveway, down my block and around the first corner. The next road was uphill, and about a block into the trip, we saw an SUV on the side of the road just sitting there blowing exhaust. Tina wondered aloud what they were doing just sitting there - blocking the road!

As we passed them, traction became non-existent and we started spinning the wheels. A kid was standing about another 25 yards ahead at the top of the hill, waving us on as if we were having to watch for cars coming around the bend. But it didn't matter because we weren't moving forward anymore and the front of her car was drifting to the left.

We stopped completely, I got out and promptly lost my footing on the sheet of ice formerly known as pavement. I tried to help Tina in any way that I could... but we quickly realized that we were going to just head home and spend another day inside. Two minutes later, I was on the ground - plopped down on my butt because I couldn't stand straight.

Returning home was fairly simple and with a little speed, we made it back up the driveway without further incident. Tina almost took a spill simply trying to walk back to the front door. I was upset because we weren't going to be able to get any more groceries and I was out of french fries.

To be honest, the rest of the day was almost entirely uneventful and it really runs together with the other two days of being trapped in the house. So I can't honestly tell you what happened today versus what happened yesterday.

The last two hours, however, are pretty fresh in mind. We had dinner (still no french fries and I'm even running out of potato chips - please, someone ship them to me... the US Post Office delivered mail again today so THAT's available), watched some TV and now we're putzing around before bed.

Oh, and my virus scanning software is still running. This is about 5.5 hours now - scanning about 250K files. I don't know what it's doing, but it's not finding any virii. Again, I'm on a Mac, so I'm fairly immune to most things out in the wild - but I was trying to be vigilant considering the new e-mail worm that's been out here for the last 48 hours. Maybe one of these days, the scan will end. I dunno'.

I guess I'll post again when I'm sure I'm clean.