Winter Is Here

We've had a little bit of snow, but after this 8.5" inches of snow fell, I officially declare the season of winter has begun. 

Queue the White Walkers....

An Apple A Day

This squirrel was quite protective of his find. Not to mention my amusement trying to get a picture of the little fella.

Little Bit Of T

Corner Post

Found the broken lamp amusing....

Rusty Gate

My question about this rusty tail gate is, why is the left side much more rusted out than the right?

Who Broke The Lamp?

I'm sure there is a story behind the broken lamp, but it sure was an odd thing to see while waiting for the stoplight to turn green.

1200 Club

A broader view of the Burnsville Bowl sign from April 20. Also attached to the bowling center was the 1200 Club. From Joey via the comments for that day, the Burnsville Bowl has been sold and has a new name. Thankfully I've captured the sign before it changes.

Burnsville Bowl

The sign is very aged and in major need of some upkeep. I have not been to this area at night to see if the sign still works. I believe the Burnsville Bowl is still operational, plus I see an aluminum ladder leading up to the sign from the bottom left. So perhaps I caught them during maintenance after all?

Minnesot-ah

I've always liked this sign. It's a store at the Mall Of America that sells Minnesota related items. The majority of the items for sale are made locally by the people of the state.

Flower Banners

Found these in a parking lot in Burnsville, one of the smaller strip malls. They were attached to the light poles. They're kind of blah to me, but someone liked them enough to put them in print.

Bring Your Shovel

Snow is piling up everywhere....

We've Got Snow, Yes We do, We've Got Snow, How Bout You?

So yeah, we also have some snow here in the Twin Cities. Nothing unusual like those states on the East Coast are getting right now. We're prepared for this type of weather. We have plows that move the snow off of the roads. We have trucks that spread salt on the roads to melt what the plows couldn't remove. We don't usually shut the state down during 97% of our snow storms. Blizzard conditions, yes....three day snow storms without blizzard conditions, not a chance!

That right, this current snowstorm started falling Sunday afternoon. It continued through the night, all day Monday and it's now Tuesday and yes, it is still snowing. When I made it to work Monday morning, I noticed the snow was piling up on the roof entrance to the back building. The height of snow surprised me to say the least. Later in the afternoon, I that height had grow to the top of the roof. I tried to capture a photo as you can see below, but it was snowing so hard at the time, the snow, sky, falling snow all blended in. Trust me, the snow has reached the top of the roof.

Round Corners

Now for something completely different. The top corner of the entrance to a very well known fast food joint. The contrasting colors caught my eye while I was waiting in line.

Semi Flames

Just one of the many strange things I see during my daily travels. A semi truck with flames painted over the tire rims.

Sponsored Bikers

Spotted this team bikers group last week while waiting for the stoplight to turn green. The bikers also had to wait their turn to cross Highway 13 in Burnsville.

Vacuum Sealed Freshness

Today is "play a joke on your co-worker" day. I bet you didn't know that day existed did you? Okay, it doesn't exisit, but that didn't stop a couple of internet-addicted, potential wedgie victims, from shrink wrapping an entire Dodge Neon. Yes, it was decided on Monday, one of their co-workers from the department they work in, would get their vehicle wrapped entirely in plastic. I didn't see the unwrapping, but my guess is, it took less time to unwrap, than it did to wrap the entire car. Though I would have liked to have seen more detail wrapping, like on the tires, mirror, antenna, wipers, etc. Something that would have made it more of a challenge during the unwrapping phase. It was all in good fun.

Skateville Roller Rink

I'm coming close to three years this coming march of posting photos to the Twin Cities Daily Photo and the biggest problem I've run into is looking through my stock of photos that I have taken. There always pops a question into my mind....have I posted this photo before or not? This is one of those photos that I swear I've posted before, but I cannot find a trace of it in the past few months of archives. It's really a strange problem to have. However, if I have not posted a photo about Skateville Family Rollerskating Center in Burnsville this will be a new location I've taken a photo of. It was in the fall of 2008 as there is grass, but now snow yet to fall and it was before I took my Seattle trip.

The Ends Of The Earth

This is one of those shots I should really flip over so the tree is upright and see if anyone figures out the photo is upside down. Since starting this photo blog, I never look at puddles the same. It's amazing what kind of photo one can get looking into a puddle about the size of a cowboy hat.

After The Storm....Part Two

Continuing on from yesterday's storm photos....as I mentioned, I was taking photos while everyone was cleaning up the fallen branches. There was a very large sewer back up around one of our loading dock areas. It made for a very easy photo opportunity and is easily my favorite photo from this set. Once the bulk of branches was cleared, since we had no power and were waiting for Xcel energy to get us back on the power grid, we had no choice but to kill time by throwing the football in our parking lot. One of my co-workers, during his college days, played for the University Of Minnesota. He easily could throw the football the furthest from everyone who participated.

According to the local weather, a small tornado had touched down in the area somewhere, but did only minor damage. 65 mile per hour winds were achieved during the touchdown. Considering how much tree damage I saw, we were luck to only have debris in our parking lot and one tree knocked down. It certainly could have been much worse.

  

One Wicked Stormy Afternoon

I'm speaking with a customer on the phone this afternoon, we were trying to rush out an urgent order for him. All was going good as could be, everything was on schedule. Just as he finished thanking my crew for their hard work, flexibility on adjusting our work load, and doing something that the commercial companies could never do....we lost power in our building due to a very powerful storm. The high winds, branches flying, trees falling over, water coming down in buckets. It was an amazing storm to watch. Heck, since we were without power and our customers order that we had worked so hard to finish was going no where, we all watched in awe as the storm rolled through

After 15 to 20 minutes of downpour, the rains stopped, we made our way outside to get an up close view of the damage. Naturally I grabbed my camera and started shooting photos. What I found interesting, while I was taking photos, the group of my co-workers started picking up the lot of the leaves and branches. No one asked them to do so, they just did it on their own. Including one brave soul who waded into the loading dock to remove debris from the sewer drain. I thought all of their efforts was rather awesome to see.

I will post another batch of photos tomorrow on the storm, including my favorite shot from this photo set.