I think vinegar may be used in place of rubbing alcohol and you can get a big jug of plain white vinegar for cheap.
@Mom22039 I feel for you! We had nearly 3” of ice after the snow as well. Dh and my son were out for several hours yesterday clearing our driveway - despite our cars covering most of the surface, it was back breaking work using a spade type of shovel on the reasonably small area that was exposed. They would break sections then pick up sheets of ice to toss into the yard. People are posting all over social media looking to pay someone, but it is soooooo time consuming and exhausting that it is hard to find someone available.
Our driveway is north facing and gets zero sun. Most of our yard is shady due to all the trees we have. When we have snow and/ice, we are envious at how quickly our neighbors’ driveways and yards melt!
I hope you are able to find someone who is able to help you!
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Going to attempt a 3 hour (normally) drive to Knoxville today. Going to leave by 11-ish so I drive in the sunlight - and hope for melting. It’s a bit warmer there so hopefully that helps although I still have a small mountain pass.
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Anyone else getting ready for snow THIS weekend? They seem to predicting another storm for us. Totals keep going up and are now around 5”. Of course, last week this time, they were still saying 24-30” for us, and we wound up with 2-3” of snow, sleet, and then a bunch of freezing rain.
I ran 5 miles this morning and it felt AWESOME! Temp around 10 with a WC of 0. My lungs just do so much better this time of year vs March-November. I stayed on the ploughed street with little traffic near the gym. Then I did some stairmonster and lifting. The heat isn’t working properly, so it was much cooler in there than usual, which I also appreciated. I wasn’t the usual nasty sweaty gross person.
And back at work. New guy made it in on time today! Said it wasn’t too bad once he got our of his neighborhood.
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According to my phone, no snow here until 2/5. Yesterday it (Google Weather) did predict snow on the weekend but no more. Bitter cold though–nothing 33 or above for 10 days.
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Back home from the hotel and feeling very lucky. There are still 130K NES customers without power (they started with over 200K on Sunday). It was lovely to walk into my condo and feel the heat working. I’ve unpacked and gotten organized, so now I’m having a cup of cinnamon spiced tea mixed with TJ’s Winter Wassail and digging into some remote work. I’m very thankful for those hardworking linemen, snow plow people, tree cutters, etc. who are working to help us become functional. I almost said normal, but we are no way going to be normal for a long time with all of the tree damage here.
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I think Fairview has it the worst in Nashville. Just drive to Cookeville 60-65 mph an hr. Stopping for lunch Enroute to Knoxville. No one rushing. Only issues are trucks have snow flying off and bridges have icicles dropping. But the roads are calm. The neighborhood and secondary roads have some dead tree limbs hanging over or have fallen. But the well trafficked roads are suitable. The sun is helping, even with 30 degree temps.
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We’ve been away for a week and a half, but our driveway is pretty long, and will be untouched when we get home. Supposedly we got between 9 and 10 inches of snow, along with ice. Hopefully the car service can get up our driveway (they have some big SUVs they will likely be driving), and hopefully it won’t snow too much before we make it home Saturday evening. We told our cat sitter to park his car at the end of our driveway, so he would only have to deal with a little snow from the plow to get out. He hasn’t complained, so I assume that worked OK.
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Update!
I made big progress, but spent 5-6 hours at it. I started in the garage and was able to start working toward the street. I had put down some ice melt yesterday and there were a few areas where it had started working. For awhile it looked like the movie HOLES or ice fishing. I had several open spots where I tried to scrape them towards each other.
Most of a one-car path is now cleared. My driveway gets morning and mid-day sun. At one point D1 suggested that I put a dark tarp out to try to get the sun to work. It worked well in one area and it is now in place in another area for tomorrow.
I wonder how sore I will be tomorrow???
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Actually, chipping up the ice on the driveway is how SIL broke his snow shovel (and bruised the palm of his hand).
I just hope the new shovel gets here before we get more snow this upcoming weekend.
Home Depot says delivery on Wednesday, but it hasn’t left the shipping facility yet according to their tracking.
Our driveway got completely plowed. It’s sunny there, and the drive faces southwest, and is blacktop. Apparently it’s pretty dry! Of course, there still is 24 inches of snow from the last storm on top of the 5 inches that was already there…and the snow bank at the road is quite high. But it’s a small street with careful neighbors. I didn’t ask if they dug the mailbox out, but I’m guessing someone did.
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That’s very common. Call the group (locality, DOT, etc.) that scrapes the snow. They should have a process for getting it replaced.
Our big boss during our snow meetings always harps to the drivers to be careful about mailboxes. There’s no excuse to knock them down… Be careful! And then one night he decided to hop in a truck and go plow a big long residential street… and took out almost every single mailbox, lol…
So far we’re still looking at a potential storm on Saturday. Keeps swinging between 4-6”, but the storm may stay off the east coast and miss us. We will see.
The guys finished their 12 hour night shifts yesterday and are back in the office today with all of the tales of the crazy residents. People blocking the street with their cars, because they don’t want the plows to push the snow against their cars on the curb. One guy theatened to come down to the office and blow it up, because they pushed snow in front of his driveway entrance, etc…
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I keep seeing these memes where people are mad that they have their driveway cleared and then the plow comes by and pushes snow in front of the driveway
I’m so confused because what do they think the plow is supposed to do?
Bummer about the mailbox.
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Thank you for the tip about contacting the city regarding the mailbox. I’ll let D1 and SIL know that.
In other news their pod arrived today from SoCal. They will be spending the next couple of days getting it unloaded before the snow this weekend. We packed it on this end so D1’s FIL and MIL are helping unload today as well as a couple of SIL’s friends to carry heavy furniture.
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Pods are great.
Remind them– NO organic materials in the pod even if you think the temperature will be below freezing the entire time. No toiletries, cosmetics, medications (the freezing/thawing cycles outside will likely cause the liquids to separate).
I have neighbors who treated the pods like a spare closet or a heated basement…. wow, what a mess.
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Exactly. We don’t love it cause that’s some extra shoveling (snow blower only works ok in that spot where the driveway hits the road) but what option is there ?!
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Looks like a beautiful cozy neighborhood!! 
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In my area, the local highway department has a cumbersome process for reimbursement of a damaged mailbox. Basically, the town replaces mailboxes only if hit directly by a plow, not by snow thrown at the box by the plow. You have to report damage quickly (often within days), submit a claim form, take a photo, etc. The town usually provides a reimbursement of about $50–75, which doesn’t come close to covering the actual cost of replacement. We decided to get a POB at the local post office after one winter where we had to replace our mailbox three times.
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We were lucky that in my last neighborhood the city replaced the mailbox post and box to match our development’s standard. Easy peasy process and they brought out a temp mailbox immediately and then had the new box installed within the week.
Now our mailbox is attached to the house so no more worries.
What is hard is the plow blocking the ends of the drive and walkways but it is what it is!
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