I don't know how they do it, but it never fails

Along with much of the rest of New England, we suffered through a nasty snowstorm yesterday here in central Maine, an April Fool's Day joke played by Mother Nature. This storm produced very heavy snow with a high water content, so it was a real pain in the (fill in the blank) to shovel the stuff.

I headed out at 12:40 p.m. to make a pass at shoveling the driveway, even though the snow was still falling at that time. It took me 25 minutes to clear things out because the slushy mess that city plows had pushed across the driveway weighed a ton, or so it seemed. At no point during my 25 minutes of shoveling did I see any city plows go by.

Satisfied with a job well done, I headed up our sidewalk toward the front porch, weary but pleased. Before I even reached the first step, a city truck came lumbering down the street and blocked the driveway with a fresh batch of slushy snow. Sadistic plow guy enabler? Yeah, there's an app for that.