Snowstorm Number 3

10 February 2010: Marine buddy Jim Wallace in Michigan is nagging at me to answer him on instant messaging. I won't reply. I don't do that stuff. Too much of a pain in my behind. Special Forces buddy Ron Berard (up in Maine) is calling me too. Both these way-up-northerners think it's funny that we're getting blasted with so much bad weather here in the Piedmont, and they're calling me to remind us that life really ain't that bad here in the mid-Atlantic. They're right of course, but I don't need to be reminded of it. Not when I have to go out in a couple hours and shovel snow again. By the national weather records I've now shoveled 65 inches of it. Incredibly, all local school districts as far south as Fredericksburg and as far north as the Mason-Dixon line will be closed all week - most have been closed since the first round of snow on 5 February. Our kids can plan on having no school summer vacation in 2010! Another one for the record books: The D.C. metro area has received more snow this winter season than Buffalo, New York. It'll eventually melt and then we can get back to complaining about hot, muggy summers here in the nation's capital.