i woke up to shovel the few more inches of snow that fell overnight. 2 parking spots in front of my house had emptied, making it easier to toss the snow onto nearby snow piles. i started from the front of the house and worked by way back. once i got to the basement, i drained my upstair neighbor's hot water tank. just as i suspected, brown water sprayed out, meaning there's a lot of sediment build-up, which led to the rumbling sound i heard last night, since it's not just heating the water but unnecessarily boiling it as well. i drained out 4 buckets of hot water until it ran clear. actually, it did never get clear, still a bit yellowy, steve will have to completely drain his tank at some point. there's no drainage in the basement, so i poured out the water onto the backyard path, instantly melting the snow, but will refreeze to slippery ice soon afterwards.

after clearing the snow off the deck, i was finished a bit before noontime. i ate a bowl of yogurt-granola-blueberry for lunch. later i had some celery with a bacon blue cheese dip for a snack (so good, but i don't know how healthy it is).

in the afternoon i packaged up frances' things and carried it by hand to the post office. the box was around 9 lbs. so it wasn't too heavy. afterwards i went to michael's to buy some yarn for my mother (asking her to knit a patriots color hat).

back at home, i decided to do a bit more shoveling, lengthening one of the empty parking spots. shoveling got me so warmed up that i took off my jacket, then my sweatshirt, until i was just working in my green celtics t-shirt and a pair of gloves. wintertime allows people to become silent heroes. digging out a parking spot doesn't do me any good since i don't own a car, but maybe a neighbor will appreciate the effort, and here's hoping they might one day dig out an extra spot. besides, it was good exercise.

maybe it was all that shoveling, but i was really hungry in the late afternoon. i went to star market to get some deli meats (turkey) and made myself an english muffin sandwich with turkey & swiss cheese & egg. i took another epsom salt bath; this time the water was hotter than yesterday, so it made for a more comfortable soak. for dinner i heated up a pair of stouffer's french bread pizza. it tasted different, like maybe they changed the kind of tomato sauce they used.