Spring time in Southern Alberta

Thursday was beautiful. Warm and sunny. No, really, warm, well above zero. The roads were bare and dry. Normal people were being to emerge with their bicycles, and it was just getting to the point I'd consider riding the roads, even though there still all the winter gravel the City dumps on the roads to appease the drivers. I didn't mention it, but I ran in shorts on Thursday.

Then on Friday the weather started to come in. It was snowing when I got home from work. Then it snowed harder. Here's a bunch of photos for you, from early Saturday morning to just a little while ago on Sunday morning.

Now it's starting to melt. The roads are bare and wet. The sidewalk I shoveled maybe an hour ago is almost dry. My legs are tired.

Facebook people will have seen some of these photos. This is Saturday morning about 7am.

Saturday about 1pm.

A bit later in the afternoon, measuring the snow in a couple places.

Sunday morning. Sunshine! At no time was this cold. Even today there is liquid water in places at the bottom of the snow, making it very heavy.

The driveway, before shoveling. I'd had a go at the sidewalk late Saturday.

Those composters are 3 feet high.

Can you see Amelia the cat supervising?

Here's the driveway after I finished shoveling everything else.

This is a pretty common thing here in springtime. We get a snowstorm or two or three that puts down a good sized dump of snow, and a few days later it's all gone. I've already prepared for the flood by shoveling out the storm drain. One year it was nearly 2 feet. We could still get that this year, even.

As you might have guessed, I didn't go to KBRCC this morning. The roads probably aren't bad, but I'd have damaged the car trying to back out over what the plough had done sometime yesterday. That stuff at the very bottom of the driveway has some huge chunks of ice in it.

Yesterday, aside from a bit of shoveling on the front sidewalk, and cleaning wine bottles, I did very little. Read. Relaxed. Surfed the interwebs, looking especially for blogs with photos from warm places, like the beach. Many of my buddies have been to such places this year. Watched a bunch of old Stargate episodes, including one that I have no memory at all of.

I've sometimes thought that you could make a great drinking game out of watching Stargate SG-1. Pick an episode at random, and take a drink every time Tealc gets tortured or says "false gods". Every time Carter says "I just need a minute", or the camera lingers on her lovely eyes, or someone falls in love with her. When Jackson looks puzzled, or grumps about the military. When O'Neil makes some quip, or references the Simpsons or other bit of pop culture, or tries to take the crew fishing. Or Hammond says "Son, I can't let you do that", in his fatherly understanding voice. Or Maybourne is slithery. Everybody should end up blotto in no time, and then we can start the Goa'uld voice imitation and costume contests.

I'm not going to bother with the weekly summary, the numbers are too small to count, even if I do include shoveling time.