I hate snow

My car has been stuck in the snow for days. The main problem I have is that my driveway slopes down a bit. If I park my car at the bottom of the driveway near the garage I can't get back up it! I had about a foot of snow on top of my car and the driveway itself was even worse. I actually had to make a path from my garage to my curb just for trash pickup.

I could just hire someone to remove the show with a truck, but the problem is that I rented a huge dumpster for some construction work. That's another problem. How are they going to pick that dumpster up and remove it when there is a foot of snow in the driveway? Also, how is a truck going to plow my driveway with a dumpster in the way?

The last few days i've been in about four different stores. Not one of them had any Snow Blowers. Home Depot had one for $299 but it was so small and looked about half the size of a push lawn mower. I then went to Lowes and nothing in stock there as well.

Check at walmart.com and they had a total of 1 in stock at a store 10 miles away. I should have picked it up. It was "only" $450. I checked the next day and it was sold out. Figures. I did some research and found a company in Kalamazoo that sold Snower Blowers. They also delivered for $35. That's what I really needed since I had no way to get it from the store.

I ended up going with the Ariens ST624E. It cost me about $749. Waaay more than I wanted to spend. I wanted to really get out the door for under $700, but it was the cheapest they had. I later checked online and it got good reviews. I also noticed another place selling it for a hundred dollars more. Paying $750 for a Snow Blower really hurts. I bet if I went with a $450 one from Wal-mart or some store i'd probably regret it.

So they delivered it and I cleared out my entire driveway. It's a start. Too bad I couldn't get up the driveway. It's all that ice. I put some salt on it and it should get better. My 1993 Honda Civic is TERRIBLE in the winter. I need some new tires or a dirt cheap truck to get me by.

I'm really far behind with my work and hopefully I can finish up part of it tonight. I'm pretty close. Tomorrow I think i'll start using my new piece of exercise equipment.

It's freezing in my house right now. The upstairs is hot but downstairs in the basement where I work, it's cold. I have a heater going in the basement so that should help soon. When the heat is set to 68 degrees upstairs the basement is usually around 61 without a heater. I even winterized the basement but it's still cold! The two doors downstairs don't help, even though I made sure no air is getting through them.

I've been having bad luck with my electronics lately. My AV receiver downstairs just died a couple weeks ago. It turns out, but has no sound. I spent an hour trying to fix it so I had to buy a new one.

A couple days ago I watched a basketball game upstairs using my DirecTV HD receiver. The next day I turned it on and nothing. No signal at all from the receiver to the TV. I tried new HDMI cables and everything I could think of. Looks like it's a dead receiver. I have a surge suppressor too, so that couldn't be the problem. Hopefully it's not the wiring in my house.

I did notice once that if I turn on lots of equipment downstairs and then go upstairs to use my 1000 watt microwave my power in my house will shut up and I have to go downstairs and flip a switch.

I have a 1500 watt heater and that doesn't cause problems. What's strange is that I can tap the heater and my lights flicker. It's barely noticeable at all. It's a home from the 1950's. The upstairs outlets are not grounded, but the ones downstairs are. I have 100 amp service, but i've been quoted around $1000 to upgrade it to 200 amp.