Wasting effort

Yesterday afternoon I spent about an hour or so clearing the snow outside our house. I made a special effort to only clear it to one side, as the other side was so full it was blocking my car from getting out in a straight line. I also made a special effort to clear part of the road so we wouldn’t have to do it when the snow freezes over (it gets really hard and heavy, much better to clear it when it’s fresh).

I woke up this morning to find that someone from the city had taken a plow to the snow on our road. This part is fine, but I also found that the pile that I had been careful not to add to had become a new repository of snow, meaning my effort to not add to it has now become completely worthless! Now I’m going to have to do some gymnastics to get my car in and out until it melts a bit.

Plus there are two long lines of snow now leftover from the plow that I will have to clear again. So much for the extra effort in clearing part of the road, but I guess that isn’t my jurisdiction. It’s hard to know what to do, because if I hadn’t cleared that and the snow plow didn’t come, it would have been much harder to clear by now because it freezes overnight.

At least there was only minimal snowfall last night I guess. Plus the area directly in front of our garage is clear so I don’t have to do that again. In other words, my effort isn’t completely wasted (it’s also a chance for some exercise outside).

Sometimes when you try hard at something, someone just comes along and just completely wipes the floor, leaving you to sit and watch in awe. You can’t win them all, but nor do you have to I guess.

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Sakata City, Yamagata, Japan 

tim@timbunting.com

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