30-I-2010.
Yesterday, writing to my folks about car prices (they sent the ads page from the local paper), and about snow.
The prices seem same as here, when recalculated, except there are no small diesels here at all. American diesel fuel is much dirtier than european, and yet more expensive than gasoline (!), perhaps it's more taxed as dirty. By price it's about the medium gasoline (there's 85, 89 and 92 octane sold here).
No other news but the snow. Go is coming as late as april. It just occurred that she's busy over her head now. First it was two months' slack with nothing important to do, all the less important staff was laid off (because they want to merge Warner's companies in Seattle), and they didn't know how to find work for those they kept as worthy. Now all of a sudden the two artists from the old company that remained have to work on three projects.
And, yes, Lena is going through a light flu, and it's just as well that school is out because of snow. It must be chaos on the streets, but we wouldn't know, we stocked up on thursday, so we can sit this out, no problem. The folks here are so clueless on driving on snow, that it's sheer comedy (until they land in a ditch). Juliška warmed her tank yesterday for half an hour, scrubbed out the windows etc... and eventually managed to reverse for a whole meter and then no go any more. Last night she managed to wiggle out, took her bare five minutes (and 15 minutes warm up), several back and forths, barely. Clueless, told you.
Virginia Beach can have snow, it already happened a few times since we came. Twice it fell on a sunday afternoon, while we were in the library, so on the way back we saw how the aborigines have no clue about driving on it. There was just 3-4mm both times, just enough to skid on it, which the young idiots did, stepping on it when they get the green light, their tank (an essyoovee or a truck) just waltzes through the crossing before even reaching halfway to the other side. Luckily, he's usually alone and plays the fool with nobody near by to slam into. And that much snow is gone by next day's noon.
This time it got serious. This was around 10:00. The pink van is the neighbor from the next block of houses, his tag reads FLOYYD... Which is some part of his name, and he must be into Pink Floyd :). By evening we had good half meter of snow, had to use shovel just to get to the back gate. There were icicles down the roof edges, because it wasn't cold enough and what heat the top floor ceilings leak suffices to melt the lower layers. And that's spotty, just going (where?) to show who has insulation and who not. One apartment has no icicles, the next one's are almost a meter long.
Eleese is our guest. Nina and she have finally, next to the place where the old Corolla is still parked, made a tiny snowman, more Buddha like.
In the morning I took to shoveling it. We found a chunk of bread in the snow on the roof of the Matrix, on top of rear left door window, some seagull must have dropped it. The priest neighbor of #5 must have fed them whole slices again.
It's incredible how nobody shovels the snow here. On one side they put banisters every eight feet even when the staircase is just three steps long, so nobody can fall and sue, and here the snow gets tamped into ice, sits there all day, and nobody even touches a shovel. Well, if you didn't know, here's how it's done.
It took a few days to thaw. On oleander and grapefruit there were icicles, water was dripping from the gutter above. The gutters get filled and then freeze. The roofs are always warmer than the gutters, because the insulation here is nothing much, so it thaws on them and freezes in the gutter. And, also, nobody cleans the gutters. We protected ours - first, it has a dripboard, so it doesn't drip down the eave and the wall, as it happens in most of the roofs, when the lowest row of shingles breaks along the edge, where it overhung, and falls off. Second, we have a cover on the gutter, with holes, so the wind blows out the leaves and the water can still flow through, so it doesn't overflow when it fills, because it doesn't fill.
They really suck at maintaining the gutters. In the #2, which is a rental, they even fixed the gutters and cleaned them and still nothing, there's no dripboard and the water drips down the eave, where they already replaced a few rotten boards, but didn't fix the cause. Wasn't on their workorder.
On fourth we still had a heap of snow on either side of the flower box, about two wheelbarrows each. On sixth it snowed again, everything got white. On seventh there was no trace of it.
Mentions: Eleese Aquila (Eleese), Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), in serbian