“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 672 (Friday)

Snow was promised. Snow was received.

Ready for the snow.

At 3:00 am when Winston politely “oofed” me awake to take him out to potty, there was a light dusting of the stuff the ground, and an abundance of tiny flakes falling steadily. At 7:00 when he next went out, smartly attired in a slightly too large, waterproof, fleece lined overcoat, snow needed clearing. The steps and paved walk were shoveled, along with a crude short path across the lawn. It was mostly wasted effort, as he can’t see the shoveled path and blazed his own trail through the accumulation. 

The first surprise was that Winston tolerated the coat. The second surprise is that he is still such a trooper in the snow, walking all over the yard. It’s just too bad he doesn’t get to run and frolic through it anymore since losing his sight. He always seemed happy bouncing around the yard. 

Blazing trails in the snow.

At lunchtime, while admiring the steaming bowl of the day’s updated soup offering concocted from yesterday’s freezer mystery soup plus leftover Vegetable Masala and rice tossed in, the idea was to have French toast for supper. It felt like a brilliant plan. Decadent, even.

The only drawback to remote work is the loss of snow days. To make it worse, every program used for work today was as slow as pond scum. Opening programs took forever. Navigation within them was like moving under water. Email was closed and reopened. I logged off the system and then back on. It was so annoying that it was decided to go out and shovel for a bit before putting my fist through the screen.

According to National Weather Service reports, Lowell got 7.4 inches as of 2:30 this afternoon. Westwood got the most at 14.4 inches. Two neighbors were already outside rearranging the snow in the shared driveway and the street beyond. The three of us cleared the rest of the driveway and the end of the street wider and better. The plow that came late in the morning had cleared a strip barely wider than a footpath down the center of the street.

As suppertime approached, it was suddenly fried seafood on the brain. After work, the favorite pizza place with the amazing captain's platter was checked, but the banner at the top of the ordering site announced they are closed until Monday. Plan B was enacted, but that shop's site said they weren’t currently taking online orders. Over at Plan C, a seafood place with great reviews, there were no descriptions of the menu items. What exactly comes on the seafood platter? It’s anyone’s guess, apparently. Plan D was Chinese food, but I didn’t love the sound of any of it enough to bother. 

The final decision was the usual fallback – yet another slab of the leftover pizza from last week, straight from the freezer and into the toaster oven by way of the microwave. As it slid from the toaster oven onto the plate, I finally remembered the plan had originally been French toast for supper, but it was too late. Maybe tomorrow. Unless there is some random diversion to derail the plan.