Watching CSI: MIAMI and shouting "DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!" every time there's a plot twist.
Probably one of the many reasons why I don't have too many people to watch TV with....
Thanks to the wonderful freak snowstorm of last week, the school portion of property tax collection for my town was posponed one week. To today.
Now, being the good citizen that I am, I don't want them to get my money one day before I absolutley have to hand over the check. So I get to pay this not insignificant portion of my income to the government on my birthday...
Should I wrap it up in fancy paper for them?
I'm back on-line!
After almost 4 days of no phone, no lights, no luxury.... it was as primitive as could be.... wait a sec, I had phone, just no dial up access. That and the battery on the laptop could only last so long...
OK. For those who don't know what I'm talking about (which is probably everyone) I live just outside of Buffalo, NY. And late Thursday night it started snowing. Now this is something that normally doesn't happen in early October, not even Buffalo. No matter what you were always told. And sometime during the night, everything lined up for a perfect storm. A perfect Lake Effect Snow Storm, to be exact.
There was cold air moving across the warm waters of Lake Erie... and the wind lined up for the entire length of the lake. If you look at a map of the Northeast, Lake Erie is an oblongish oval that points right at Buffalo. What this meant was that the cold air had the whole lake to draw moisture from. And boy did it!
So, late Thursday and early Friday, the snow started to fall thick and heavy. We're talking snow with the consistency of.... well, it was kind of like the snow cone you get at the fair. And it was falling from the sky.
Now normally, this wouldn't have been such a big thing. We've handled multiple feet of snow falling overnight many a time. Just... we've never had it so early in the season. Well, actually this early in the wrong season. And that meant there was one thing different that we weren't used to.
Leaves.
All the leaves were still on all the trees. Now for a pine tree, no problem. They're shaped such that they can handle heavy snowfall on their branches. But Buffalo is a city of oaks and maples and elms. Lots and lots of them. In fact, just about every street in the county is lined with those glorious, beautiful trees. At least they were.
The heavy, unprecedented snow stuck to all the big, broad leaves on the trees that are literally everywhere. Far more snow than would have stuck to the bare branches later in the season. And far, far more than the branches could bear.
So, with sounds reminiscent of gunfire, down came the branches. And since these were no little saplings, on the way down, the branches took many - if not most - of the power lines in the area with them.
Thus, Friday morning - Friday the 13th, rather appropriately - dawned white, cold, and powerless.
Which meant I had a long, cold weekend..... still got to work though. I'm the only one who knows all of the prices for our store stuff in my head. So I spent all the daylight hours at work, taking cash transactions only (credit card systems don't work without power either...) and making change in my head.
Fun times....
The Bills didn't get a single break today. Fumbled kicks.... dropped passes.... missed interceptions.... missed tackles.... fumbled returns....
This looked an awful lot like the U.B. Bulls (1-5) playing out there. But at least U.B. can score more than a few points now and then..(They lost yesterday to Ball State, 55-25)
The Bills looked almost as bad as the Raiders.
I would be officially in a bad mood if it wasn't for the Sabres going undefeated so far this season. Unfortunately, they don't play again until Friday.
It's going to be a long week.
On a related note: I really don't like the new Sabres' logo. I like that they went back to the Blue and Gold colors. All the NFL uniforms were starting to look all alike. Black, white and an accent color.
But why couldn't the Sabres have come up with a decent logo for the new uniform? Someone leaked to the press that the Sabres were going to be using THIS as their chest emblem, and there was an overwhelming outcry against it. So of course that's what they decided to use.
Thank you very much. Now we have a Buffaslug for a logo.
They couldn't go with the round logo with crossed sabres, like they had for their Alternate Game Jerseys last year. Nooooooo. That was too good a look, and actually incorporated the TEAM'S name into it.
OK. I guess I'm done with my sports ranting for the day. Good thing Buffalo doesn't have a basketball team I guess...
