We appear to be in the end stages of Snownarok now. At least I think we are. Supposedly the last step, after the massive battle of the gods, was that the entire world was covered in water. I don't think they mentioned what phase of matter it was supposed to be in. I can totally see the Vikings expecting the world to end in piles and piles of snow.

If we end up in a giant post-apocalyptic train endlessly circling the world, I want to be in the car with Chris Evans. He takes up a lot of space, but you know, he seems useful.

There is so much snow piled up fucking everywhere that they have stopped plowing it and started trucking it out to the coast so they can throw it into the ocean. They begin with piling it in the commuter parking lots, but now they've dropped back to the old Bostonian tradition of, when you realize you are running out of space for whatever, dumping shit into the harbor until the problem fixes itself. They've certainly had a lot of practice at it. The Massachusetts State House used to be right on the water.

The T is limping along in partial operation. I think I prefer when it shuts down entirely. The Red is running Alewife-Andrew right now, and the Orange is running Sullivan-Back Bay. Three out of four Green lines have been shut at Kenmore. (Of course they still run to Kenmore. Firstly, that station is still underground, and secondly, the population would mutiny if they couldn't get out to Fenway Park in the unlikely event that a baseball game breaks out.) The el tracks up in Camberville are passable and the tunnels are fine. Wherever the track runs at-grade right along the ground, they have given the fuck up. At one point they informed us that there would be reduced or no service from Sullivan to Oak Grove, because they were bringing in jet engine-powered snow blowers to try and keep the track bed clear. They specifically mentioned the jet engine part on their web page, presumably to reassure us that this was SRS BIZNIZ. You know you're playing winter in Hard Mode when your city starts stealing their snow-removal plans from the airport at Arkhangelsk.

I'm oddly glad I'm living through this in Boston, and not in New York City. For all the squirrely confusion of our street atlas, the roads in Boston are generally wider, and there's way more open space to shove the snow drifts into, at least at the beginning. I walked right past the 9/11 memorial thing mainly because I'm so accustomed to thinking as parks as an ordinary part of the city sprawl. It's the default option in Boston. If you leave a lot empty for more than five or six minutes here, someone will wander in and plant a lot of greenery in it. Liberty Square is a landmark in Manhattan because there aren't a lot of other blocks that aren't already full of a giant concrete something.

Seven feet of snow in Manhattan would either obliterate all the roads or literally block in anyone on the first floor of a building when they plowed. Maybe both. Yeah, I'd rather do this here.

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