5 nights w/o p and a: day 4

yep. day four. it was a snow day. the blizzard of 06 kept just about everyone within their own neighborhoods.
i woke up this morning around 6am thinking i could bomb through the alley in p's car and make it work. boy was i wrong. i opened up the garage door to find about 18-24 inches of snow in the alley. i realized getting to work would be just about impossible. so i called into the ai that was at the refinery and told him that i wouldn't make it in. i changed into some snow shoveling clothes, hooked up the ipod to computer speakers i keep in the garage, and started to shovel. due to the nature of how the houses/townhomes are set up, we share an alleyway and have a driveway of about only eight feet. so i shoveled out the eight feet, which took about an hour, and then moved to the front of the house to shovel out the walk.
i opened the front door to find a snow drift about three feet high. looking over the gate, the snow drift was just as high. as i started on the front walk, my neighbor four houses to the east came out with his shovel and started to shovel a path toward the east alley. after he dug out a path to the alley, he turned in my direction and we worked toward each other. at that time, another neighbor started to dig out her walk, and being done with one portion, hucked myself through the snow and helped her dig out her walk so she could open her gate.
since all the shoveling i planned for the day was done, i decided to hike on over to home depot to see if they were open, get some stuff for the train table if they were open, and also to get a walk in. after about a block, i decided this walking stuff is for the birds and went home and got my mtn bike. the main arteries in and out of stapleton were plowed and in ok shape. so i got the bike out and rode up to home depot: closed, so i headed back to 29th to see what would be open for lunch. everything in the town center aside from anothony's pizza was closed. so i called up r&m and let them know. and then proceeded to head to their house to see how their shoveling was coming along.
29th was not at all plowed; but some poeple had driven down the road and packed in two tracks... just hard enough where i could spin through 95% of it. after about 45 minutes of playing in the snow, i headed back home.
after a change of clothes, i met r&m and headed to anthony's for a meatball sandwich.
after lunch, it was back to the garage to do random things... but i ended up shoveling more snow. i found out that the road north of the house had been semi-plowed, so i dug out my car so i could get to work in the morning. at that time, some of my neighbors were out shoveling their own section of the driveway... and ended up we all worked on shoveling out the alleyway so we could all get our cars out. i think it took about three hours total, but now, half of the alleyway is clear and eight families can get their cars out. woo hoo. wait, where's the HOA?
dinner, a half batch of cookies (due to a lack of flour) and it's now 9pm. thinking about vacuuming the upstairs.
off to work tomorrow. but only four hours.
not sure if p and a are gonna make it home due to the storm. i believe dia is closed until noon tomorrow? the 5 nights w/o p&a could be stretched a bit longer. hopefully not much though; would really like to have them home for xmas. only time will tell.