Wondering, on Wednesday (v14)

Yeah, so we got a little weather today in the Syracuse area.  We cannot complain, of course - that right is reserved for those who survived the 7-foot snowpocalypse that hit many of the towns near Buffalo last month.  It does, however, leave me wondering, on Wednesday about a few things. For example:

Yesterday in my news feed on Facebook there was a map of the CNY area, and you could drill down into it and find the quadrant that included your neighborhood and see your personalized projected snowfall.  Ours was 11.7 inches. Not 11.5 inches; 11.7.  A little square or two away in any direction and it was as much as a couple of inches different.  I'm wondering how the heck they do that? Or, maybe the question should be why the heck they do that?

My Sweet Baboo and I have a stone driveway, which means that we shovel, we don't snow blow or have it plowed -- we shovel. This morning we didn't have a chance to do that before work, so I knew coming home that the driveway would be a challenge if they were close on that 11.7 inch expectation. I anticipated we'd park in the street until we could get inside, change our clothes and then get the shoveling underway. My Sweet Baboo, however, had a different idea. One that got us good and stuck about 80% in the driveway, at what I'll call a jaunty angle.  I'm wondering when he's going to admit that a car that has as low clearance as our HHR really stands very little chance of plowing through snow that's three inches deeper than that low clearance?

As I was changing into shoveling clothes, I heard a snow blower outside, and lo and behold, someone was out there, clearing out the area around the car. I had no idea who it was, but was thanking my lucky stars for the help. Turns out it was our neighbor across the street, who had just spent $200 on the snow blower; he bought it from someone who was moving south.  He also noted that his wife is still yelling at him for spending the money. I would have paid ten times that much for the help he gave us tonight, but I'm wondering how long it'll take me to get the stones cleaned up next spring...

While we were out in the driveway getting things cleaned up, there were a couple of nice gusts of wind, which made the visibility about as poor as that in the transparent city of Washington DC. Seems that there was some wheeling and dealing in a booth in the corner in the dark in the back of some closet or something, and there's a budget deal that will get us off the precipice of another fiscal cliff and fund the government for the next year or something.  Except that it includes things like giving a piddly 1% raise to most of those serving in the military, and cuts the Environmental Protection Agency and the IRS. And, oh yeah -- it increased the amount an individual can contribute during an election cycle to as much as $1.5 million or so, depending on who's reading the bill.

John McCain had suggested that the bill would be jammed full of shit, and he was right.

Not for nothing, but I'm wondering if this Congress in particular is so hellbent on showing how much they support our military, why don't they give our soldiers all $1.5 million, instead of effectively giving themselves that extra money?

Or, maybe, like Jonathan Gruber said, they're relying on their own lack of transparency and the stupidity of the American voter to get their budget bill passed.