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painful job with an imprecise multitouch interface
Wednesday, March 7 2018
Today an anticipated 12 inches of snow was to fall, but Gretchen went to the bookstore anyway, leaving early in the Subaru to beat the worst of it. She wanted to be there partly to help with the annual inventory, which (to me at least) doesn't sound exactly like a task to beat a snow storm in order to participate in.
The snow had been coming down in soft little flakes before noon, but after that the flakes turned bigger and wetter and fell through absolutely nonexistent winds, accumulating gorgeously on everything. I took a picture a little after 5:00pm, and a little before 6:00pm our power died. Evidently the accumulated snow on some tree (probably an evergreen near the bottom of Dug Hill Road) and sent it crashing down onto a powerline needed for electricity to get to our house. Fortunately, we still had cellphone service, reasonably well-charged phones, and charged laptops to recharge our phones should we deplete their power. I pretty much continued my workday, though I was hobbled by having to do it all on my phone. A bluetooth keyboard helped, but trying to cut and paste between windows is a painful (and seemingly impractical) job with an imprecise multitouch interface. (I defy you to successfully select a paragraph on one screen and paste it onto another; I was finding it easier to type from memory.)
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At some point I started drinking gin, which my alcohol rules allow for on a night that I go to bed in an un-electrified building.
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Meanwhile, Gretchen had periodically been going out into the dark (with her headlamp) and digging out the driveway. She had most of it done by the time I went out and shoveled away the snow still blocking the Prius. The snow was heavy, though not as deep as I'd expected. It was maybe eight inches or even a bit less. It had fallen onto soil warmed by recently warm conditions, so as it tended to be most clumpy near the ground, meaning it was possible to lift up chunks to reveal completely clear terrain.
The snow today at about 5:20pm, a half hour before we lost power. This is looking east from the upstairs bedroom window at our septic field (now over-run with ever-larger white pines). (Click to enlarge.)
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