Arduinna

I'm working from home today, which I love doing - I get to wear comfy clothes, and scritch my cat, and save on gas.

Usually, this is a scheduled thing. Today was a surprise, as my landlord called me last night to say he was bringing in a photographer (from the insurance company) to take pictures of my living room and bathroom, to see what sort of damage got done in this winter's storms. We had ice dams, see.

If you're not from snowy climes, ice dams are what happens when too much snow and ice builds up on your roof, and your gutters are completely clogged. The warmth of your house starts to melt the ice from underneath, but there's no place for the runoff to go -- so it goes into your walls.

We've had them before; the worst was the winter of 1995/96, when I left pots out in my living room for about two weeks as my ceiling dripped and dripped and dripped, and I kept a wary eye on my damp bedroom wall. I try not to think about the water damage to the walls; it's not my house, and my landlord didn't think it was a problem.

This time, I had water dripping in my living room again. But for the first time ever, I also had water dripping in my bathroom. The only saving grace was it ran down the walls into the tub, so at least I had a built-in pot sitting there to collect it all.

This is why it dripped:

( pictures from Snowpocalypse 2011 )

Yes, if you're wondering, you are actually seeing ice stuck to the walls all the way down the sides of the house, and those windows are coated in ice half an inch or more thick. So we didn't just have water coming in from where the eaves meet, we had it coming in everywhere.

Thank god, not long after I took these we had some warm days that melted it all off. (Well. Everything came off the walls. There was still some ice and snow on the roof and in the gutters; that took a few weeks to clear out completely. And the icicles took a couple of days to crash all the way down. That was exciting.)

It's not like snow is unusual around here in the winter. But usually it's more spread out, and things melt back in between storms - there's usually snow along the sides of the road, but the snowbanks are generally only a foot or two high, with an extra foot or so on the corners where the plows pile things up. This winter? The snow that wasn't plowed (or shoveled) up high was at a good 3-4 feet (and wasn't so much snow anymore, as compressed, icy hard-pack). Anywhere people were dumping snow from shovels or plows could be twice that or more (and also compressed and icy).

Here is a picture of a friend of mine, about 5'4", standing in front of the gates of a cemetery near my house a few years ago, on a warm summer day:

( summer, yay )

Here is a shot of that same cemetery wall, unfortunately from a different angle, in January on the same day I took the house pics.

( winter, woe )

Y'know, looking at it now, it doesn't look that bad? But ye gods, it was awful at the time. There was so much snow that even main roads barely had room for two lanes; back roads, forget it, all you could do was pray you didn't meet anyone coming the other way, because one of you was either backing up or driving into a snowbank to get out of the way. Let us not speak of the joys of having unassigned street parking, and neighbors who don't believe in shoveling.

Fun winter. *g*

So yay for spring, and being able to sit around in short sleeves with some of my windows open. And who knows, maybe my bathroom and living room will be repainted/re-papered this year, woo, which they desperately need. Maybe all that ice and snow will have been (sort of) worth it.

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In other news, Earth is sitting in a space-time vortex, for reals. No, really for reals. NASA just proved it.

That is so damn cool.