Ed and his bodacious snow pile.

Well la dee da…it just wouldn’t be a true-blue Saskatchewan winter without at least one ‘weather event’, which is what the fancy-pants wet-coast Weather Network hosts call ‘Blizzards’.

It started out, as disasters often do, most pleasantly; I rather enjoyed seeing big, impossibly white flakes alighting most picturesquely on branch and bough outside my window as I wrote my Friday post. I enjoyed it less 8 hours later. By 2 a.m. Saturday it was coming down in earnest and by Sunday it was a flurry of biblical proportion.

My lovely Ed shoveled four times this weekend, and raked the roof too* but it was all for naught by this morning however. Environment Canada can kiss my sweet, frost-bitten ass for the overnight forecast of ‘+/- 1 cm of snow overnight’. Snow-blow me, fellas – I know what 8 inches looks like and, Billy-Bob-be-damned, there it was in the driveway at 6 a.m. today, 3/4 of the way up my sexy black Sorels.

By the grace of God and my brother-in-law’s bad-ass old-timey jacked-up Jeep alone, Ed and I reported to work today. We’re the only people on our street that even tried. Actually five people tried and failed: two are stuck at the north exit of our crescent, two at the south, and one prize asshat reversed straight out of his drive into the street, got stuck like a T-Rex in a tarpit then got out and scampered back into his house, leaving the car there – presumably – until thaw. What. A. Douchebag.

But does not the good book** say that ‘All Suffering is Redemptive’? The Vancouver Orgainzing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, I hear, has got more troubles than a knocked-up nun. They’ve got rampant debt, bogus Chinese-made Cowichan sweaters, a ho-hum line-up of althetes (and the second-coming of Josee Chouinard [who falls twice during the Freeskate. See her wipe out at the 40 sec, and then 4 min, 9 sec mark] Joanie Rochette, oh goody) and now, the venue at Whistler/Blackcomb is in foreclosure and as if that didn’t suck enough, they’re a teeny bit short on snow.

VANOC! Have I got a deal for you! For sale: Fresh, white snow. Light consistency, ideal for downhill/crosscountry/freestyle skiing. Large lot (16 million tons) goes as-is, buyer must pick up. Limited time offer.

*No, I’m not f-ing with you; we do rake our roofs here but for snow, not leaves (as if!). Wind can cause snow to build up on the roof and when a 6 x 8 ft drift forms over your front door an avalanche is not a matter of if but a matter of when.  We usually leave these drifts with the hopes they’ll cascade onto those plucky evangelicals who keep coming to the door, but since we were expecting friends, and since nothing gets an evening off on an awkward note more than having to hire rescue dogs to dig out your dinner party, we raked the worst of it down.

** The Steve Guttenberg Bible.