Removing snow

this is the main street in our apartment complex, sunday afternoon. as mentioned, the snowplowing crew started their work when the snow just started coming down, they worked when the storm was at its height (the harsh wind blowing snow in your face wasnt the most fun part when we walked around friday night to "experience the storm"), they were still working when we went to sleep around 1 in the night.... i dont know whether they worked through the night, but i do know they were already working while we were just waking up.... they worked the entire saturday, sunday, and this evening i saw the bulldozer still being operated. our complex has 550 apartments, not small, but not huge either. imagine the amounts of snow and the huge amount of work being done so that we could just open the front door and walk around without sinking deep into the snow. one of the perks of apartment living, not having to shovel yourselves!! :) the least thing i could do was baking a cake for the crew, but then we broke the cake in 2 (it didnt want to come out of the bundt pan in one piece), so i baked another one..... not much work compared to what the shovellers did!

above they were removing the huge mountains of snow they had made the day before. it was loaded into the truck, and moved to the little snowfarm at the end of our complex; i guess that himalaya of snow will be there for quite a while, even though it was relatively warm today and yesterday (and even raining today). because of all the salt and other bad chemicals, the snow cannot just be dumped into the ocean, as was being done years ago. so... its piled up high, and being a pedestrian can be quite difficult... :) you have to check were you can cross the street, is there a gap on the other side too, or do i have to climb the snow? and as its melting, large, deep, muddy, salty puddles have formed. but no! im not complaining, the snow was great and now i get to wear my real snowboots that are meant to sink into the mess and still keep my feet dry!! 

ah, and, something really important; it was officially a blizzard. the national weather service said so. the past days this wasnt certain yet, so i am glad it is a fact now...... ;)

Cleared roads

no public transport this morning, and we were lazy anyways..... ..... later this morning the MBTA announced that they would resume a little bit of service from 2 this afternoon. however.... and i quote their message directly; "Unless necessary, customers are encouraged to stay home and use service sparingly." that little sentence just made me laugh all day. use it sparingly? are they checking whether you really need to take the subway or its just for fun...? ah well, as said, we were lazy, and just cleaned our apartment a bit, sorted stuff out, etc, and then went for another snow-walk. as you can see here, the main roads are clear again (after hours and hours of work), but for pedestrians that wasnt the case everywhere. here there was some sort of path to the right, but there was still enough snow left to make  for quite a tiring walk. at some places, the sidewalk wasnt cleared at all and we had to walk on the streets. not much fun, cars just sped by without even looking at us..... on  the news i saw that 1also in boston the main roads are mostly clear again, but the side streets, where people actually live and have parked their car, arent, so they still cant go anywhere.
we just wanted to have a walk on the cemetery but, although it was being plowed, turned out to be closed, and so we just went home again....