It\u2019s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending out of a gray sky.\u00a0 The temperature has soared from a low last night of two degrees Fahrenheit to a current balmy twenty degrees.\u00a0 I\u2019ve announced to Camera Girl that I intend to skip snow removal altogether today and save my efforts for Monday when the lion\u2019s share of the snow will be on the ground.\u00a0 The current predicted accumulation for Sunday through Monday is ten to fifteen inches of the white stuff.\u00a0 All in all, that\u2019s not horrible.\u00a0 The snow blower is 24 inches high.\u00a0 Now, even fifteen inches will slow the work way down but you have to look at these things in the right way.\u00a0 I\u2019ll abandon the bottom driveway for the next few days and start off with a path for my car to get out on the top.\u00a0 Then I\u2019ll clear the entire top driveway and adjacencies and slowly work on the bottom driveway in a strategic fashion.\u00a0 And the wind will play an important part in that operation.\u00a0 Fifteen inches of snow isn\u2019t a monstrous height but if wind forces me to dump off the snow right next to the row I\u2019m clearing, it will quickly end up as three feet before very long.<\/p>\n
And this is the sad reality of life in New England.\u00a0 Aspects of snow removal become the focus of your every waking hour.\u00a0 Equipment maintenance and repair, severity of the weather, work and chore scheduling, current health and injuries.\u00a0 It\u2019s all very, very tedious and boring.\u00a0 But completely unavoidable.\u00a0 That is unless there is some plan for escape!\u00a0 But I know that will never be.\u00a0 I\u2019m bound by the heavy chains of family responsibility.\u00a0 They\u2019ve got me.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why Jake Barter is such a comfort to me in these times of tribulation.\u00a0 Jake resides on an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific.\u00a0 Lying in a hammock beneath coconut palms he sips a cool drink while balmy zephyrs maintain a perfect seventy-eight degrees.\u00a0 And if by some miracle the temperature reaches eighty-two, he need only spring from his berth and swim about in the warm clear ocean for a few minutes before returning to his rest where he awaits the mellow sound of a dinner gong announcing the beginning of a feast concocted of pork, coconut, honey and spices, fit for the king that he is.<\/p>\n
Oh, well.\u00a0 Maybe in my next life.\u00a0 But for now, I\u2019ll count my blessings.\u00a0 The roof hasn\u2019t collapsed under the weight of the snow.\u00a0 The propane tanks are full enough for even a two-week power outage.\u00a0 I have plenty of DVDs to keep me amused during the \u201cweather crisis\u201d and Camera Girl assures me we have enough food for the next few days at least.\u00a0 And tomorrow, my marketer has informed me begins the efforts to advertise \u201cThe Sniper.\u201d\u00a0 I had assumed it would happen when the publication occurred on Wednesday.\u00a0 But you know what they say about assuming.<\/p>\n
Well, we shall see.\u00a0 Today Amazon has it listed as:<\/p>\n
Best Sellers Rank: #144,617 in Books<\/strong><\/p>\n #599 in Technothrillers (Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n #14,261 in Science Fiction (Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n It would be nice if each of those numbers was shortened by a zero or two.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now where is that hammock?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,3366,1289,818,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[5093,1290,339,340,114,4484],"class_list":["post-35896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-life-in-dunwich","category-fiction-by-me","category-ocf","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-jake-barter","tag-my-fiction","tag-new-england","tag-new-england-winter","tag-snow","tag-the-american-archipelago-book-1-the-sniper"],"yoast_head":"\n