Whiteout or The Blizzard's Effect On My Weight Loss

For those of you readers outside of Chicago you may have heard we had a little bit of snow.  By the time all was said and done the official total was the third highest in recorded history in Chicago at just shy of 21", but being by the lake my totals were a bit higher.  I had been chafing at the fact I could do very little out of doors recently, so I took this as an opportunity to get a very good outdoor workout by digging my car out.  I was determined to do a masterful job, frankly for the purposes of impressing my neighbors.  Here are before and after pictures of my car, and my get up which caused profuse sweating.

 

You can see how I ended up a little sweaty after an hour and a half of shoveling.

 

Before the dig out.  Luckily the wind kept the drifts away from the side panels, so I was able to dig out comparatively easily.

I personally find this to be a thing of beauty.

Much to my pleasure my neighbors were impressed, and asked me to help them do the same.  This is where I got in trouble.  Most of my neighbors were well on their way and I just got them the last bit out, but one less than intelligent neighbor came out expecting to just drive away, walking up to her car and exclaiming, "they didn't dig me out!".  I had an extra shovel (of course she didn't have one) and we got started.  Towards the end of the process I got a shovelfull of snow a bit too far off center and threw out my back, but we finished.  I asked her why her boss was making her come in today and she said "I'm going to the grocery store".  I could only laugh.  One, because she should have gone Monday, which I had no qualms telling her, and two, because we happen to have a little grocery store, which was open, IN OUR BUILDING.  All you have to do is walk around to the side entrance.  She was unaware of this, and by "this" I mean the store's existence, and walked over.  Her car has yet to move.  So, I have not been doing any working out since Wednesday, but on the plus side the trip from couch to pantry/fridge is less than pleasant, so snacking has been kept in check.  Always a silver lining.

Oh, and just as an indicator of the kind of snow we got for the "that doesn't look like that much crowd", here you are:

That is about halfway up the drift, so a fair indication of what I was digging through.