This past week, I was out of town to spend Thanksgiving with in-laws for the first time since 2019. Some of you may know that, along with She Who Must Be Obeyed and her trusty dog “Chewy”, I moved back to Iowa from Florida last July, where we have lived for the past 5 years. Prior to our Florida adventure, we had traded off with her relatives in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving and Christmas, for quite a number of years― thus our little holiday tradition is restored.
Very nice.
We returned home back in Iowa on Friday afternoon, just in time for the storm that began just after midnight on Saturday morning. The snow fell from then until about midday on Sunday, leaving a large amount of snow and ice in its wake.
Understand: I have not shoveled snow in years and we open the season with the Big Storm of 2025…
So, would it have been too much to ask for some easy ones to build up for a big storm, sort of like spring training before the start of a new season…?
So now I ask myself: “Which is better, cleaning up after a Florida Hurricane or a major Midwestern snowstorm?”
I’ve been going round and round in my head about that; it’s a tough one. The weather is sure better after the hurricane is through, clear skies, calm winds, mid 80’s. Yet there is no power, water or internet. Sometimes the power comes back on before the internet does, and for the life of me, I can’t see what the point of having power is, without internet… Yet after the snowstorm, the temperature goes through the floor and it’s unpleasant to work in.
I suppose that in both cases we get through it, nobody died, at least in our area, no one was hurt, and thank God the power didn’t go out. Yes, we have been talking here about giving thanks, haven’t we? Well, this is another time to be thankful, and then it’s back to work.
Life Project Blog 
What does Chewy think about the move?
Chewy is NOT amused.
I left the ice covered foothills of Washington State for the desert of Arizona. I don’t blame Chewy.
I have been through three hurricanes. Snow is bad, but snow is rarely that bad.
I used to live in Northern Virginia. Usually, the snow does not amount to much, but every now and then that part of the country can get over three feet of snow. The first time I saw that happen was in about 1995. The locals had not seen anything like that in a long while, and the local government did not have the equipment to do anything about it. Since it stayed cold after the storm, the Washington Metropolitan area stayed shut down for a week.
Fortunately, the utilities still worked, but I hike to hike to the grocery store in the snow boots that I had bought in Colorado. Somehow the grocery store got enough people to come in to operate the store. The big SUVs and four-wheel drive trucks could still get through the snow, and those big guys slowly packed the snow so smaller vehicles could ride on top.
Ah yes, I recall one of those times in’14 or ’15.We were living in Alexandria then when my wife was at the Pentagon. The big snow hit the night before we were scheduled to depart for Illinois to visit relatives. Lucky for us, we had decided to take the train, since we’d never done that before. After the storm, everything was closed except Metro Rail and Amtrak, so we actually got out. Of course up in the mountains, not all that far from Harper’s Ferry, we were stopped for 4 hours due to frozen switches.
I am glad that I haven never had to deal with a really bad storm during my life
It looks nice out the window
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