For those fretting (as we know you have been) about how B.C.'s capital handled Snowmageddon, here's a diary of Victoria's week-long brush with winter...
SUNDAY: Snow today. Super! It's nice to shed the grey, damp West Coast gloom and get a taste of a real Canadian winter.
Judging from all the Twitter chatter, liquor stores had better restock the Bailey's.
MONDAY: Oh, timid Victoria. Looks like everyone came down with the Three O'Clock Flu, bolted for cover ahead of tonight's next big dump.
(Good idea, though. Already the Malahat is messier than Jon and Kate's divorce.)
Dang, wish I had stopped at the grocery store.
TUESDAY: Whoa, we're snowed in. Not much food in the house, either. Now I know how the Chilean miners felt.
We made the best of things, cobbled together a hearty stew from all the stuff at the back of the fridge. Have to restock when it melts tomorrow.
WEDNESDAY: Enough already. The snow is - gasp! - a foot high. The whole city has gone to ground, downtown as spookily devoid of life as Manhattan in that Will Smith zombie movie, or Oak Bay after dark.
Us, we can't even get out of the yard, which is stressful; I heard the Weather Network piano music, began to cry.
Alas, the forecast was for more snow, a howling sou'easter and, possibly,
locusts. Sure enough, the wind picked up and we lost power faster than
Gordon Campbell after the HST.
That's OK, we still have the fireplace for warmth, and scrounged up some hamburger to grill on the barbecue.
THURSDAY: It's worse than ever. Even if I could dig my way out of the driveway, which is hard to do with a Victoria snow shovel (a cookie sheet duct taped to a lacrosse stick) the roads are slicker than the guy who sold me my "dry" firewood, which doesn't burn so much as boil.
Bad news, because the temperature has plunged to minus six (or, as they call it in Calgary, "August").
Lost the shortest dog in the snow, but at least he left his Gaines-Burgers, which we barbecued and ate with some seafood sauce and a side of Cheerios (no milk).
That's it for the food. Growing short-tempered.
FRIDAY: What is this, a joke? The snow stopped, but then we got hit with a fog more impenetrable than the installation instructions for your last TV, followed by a freezing rain chillier than the look I got when she caught me wolfing down the can of smoked oysters I found while tearing out shelving to burn in the fireplace.
So hungry.
Tried to barbecue a pemmican of corn flour, vegetable oil and compost, but the tank ran out of propane and she ran out of the house, left me for the snowplow driver (the one who deposited the man-high ice dam at the foot of the driveway).
Don't know what her problem was, though she mentioned something about Jack Nicholson in The Shining. That leaves me with my only real friend, a volleyball named Wilson.
Now it's so windy that the cat staggered in looking like it was patted backwards. Thought of eating it, but it was eyeing me the same way, so I decided to keep my distance. (Caught the neighbour looking at me funny over the ice dam, too. Lyrics to I Ate My Fiance ran through my head: "She gave me heartache, she gave me heartburn, too.")
Still no power. Freezing, starving, feet soaked (right, did I mention the flooded basement?). Can't go on. Staggered through the whitecaps in the driveway, slung a lipstick-on-bedsheet sign over the ice dam: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." Oh, sweet death please embrace me.
SATURDAY: Rain, blessed rain.
Grey, grim, soul-sucking slop. Oh, how we have missed you.
The ice dam broke, the snow melted and electricity was restored, as was public order after the cops broke up the food riots at Safeway.
Others may laugh at our weather wimpiness, but that was a rough week.
Victoria's plight even topped the national news. Well, no, it was America's Funniest Home Videos, but close enough.
