Winter is EVIL

Can I take a minute to complain about the weather here in Chicago?  I know, everyone’s a critic, but there’s a reason that some people continue to deny that whole global warming issue and that’s because places like Chicago exist.  You know you’ve made it when you get your own Wikipedia article.  Snowmaggedon, the Snowpocalypse, or the Groundhogs Day Blizzard of 2011.  Call it what you will, to me, snow is just additional proof that God hates us and wants us to get the fuck off this planet.

The snow started innocently enough, as far as snow storms go.  Work calls me after about an inch has landed.  They say the same thing the TV and radio jerks have been saying all afternoon:  this is the big one.   To back that up, they offer hotel rooms to any of us scheduled to work the next day.  I say, heck, why not?  Beats watching the snow fall on Clark Street.   

I took my time, finishing my chores and doing some work at home, by which point this shit is getting serious.   Just to prove it snows in hell, Lake Shore Drive is completely shut down, with hundreds of motorists stranded in the snowy waste land.  I arrive at the redline, only to find out that it too had been shut down.  So back on the bus I went.   It’s now 8PM and the city is a literal ghost town of white shit.  I get a private bus ride all the way to the blue line in Jefferson Park. 

Hiking my way through the treacherous parking lot to the hotel, I feel like Mad Max if the desert had been a plain in Antarctica.  It’s clear to me how easy it would be to die ten feet from your own door if you can’t see it, what with all the ice spitting into your eyes.  There’s also this weird roaring noise, and the occasional lights flashing from the sky.  It’s not planes from O’Hare, since those were grounded hours ago.  That’s right, folks.  Thunderstorms.  Snow-belching, bone-quaking thunderstorms. 

Alas, I arrive at the hotel too late to indulge in a hot tub, but I do enjoy some late night TV and gossiping with a work friend before calling it a night.  Time and a half and a close encounter of the freezing kind.  The next day, I get paid time and a half and eventually make the trek back home, walking down the center of Clark Street, which is about the only plowed street in the whole damn city.   And yes, it only took me 15 minutes to unearth my car the day after, by backing it out of its snow cave into my neighbor’s freshly dug space.  And leaving it there.  Put a chair in that space, bitches.