10 Pounds of Sand

Minnesota, that hellish land of ice and snow is 20 inches below the average expected snowfall rate for this time of year. Once it is understood that the 2 inches of snow so far, and the 2 ice storms fail to make up for this deficit, one understands the predicament we find ourselves in. It’s very cold, and not very snowy.

The average temperature at which ice melts is somewhere above freezing- a temperature I don't think we've seen since before Christmas. Therefore, all the ice that fell on New Years is still around. The poor Physical Plant people, among the hideous tasks of having to sink new signposts into the asphalt of the parking lot to replace the ones knocked out by idiots pulling donuts, are literally burying the campus in sand. Heaven forbid a few drunken college students should slip, fall, and hit their poor little heads. *You do have to have insurance to come here!* Of course the sand doesn't stay there, on those innocuously icy footpaths where it is sprinkled, it gets tracked into every building on the feet of people who are too concerned with the cold to scrape off their shoes.

Now to the main point--- I swept almost every bit of brown tile in the athletic center tonight, including the stairs *yes, I remembered to sweep the stairs before I swept the tile underneath!* and created two MONSTROUS piles of sand and dirt in the center of the floor. I swept my beautiful piles into a dustpan like a good little custodian and almost broke my back dumping the damn thing into the trash.

Why don't those idiots at Physical Plant just SHOVEL the snow and ice off the walks instead of putting down so much more sand? Their half-assed efforts using that useless little machine that scrubs and brushes the sidewalks cannot be pardoned. I wanna see them work as hard as me, dammit!