The rough plan was in 5 days I would get in my car, drive for 2 days straight and wind up in my new home of Portland, Oregon. There I would be generously put up by Matt and Kelly Sue while I waited for Charlie to get there from L.A.. We'd find a place by February and be full-on, established residents of the Pacific Northwest.

 You know that gag about how to make god laugh, right?

 On Christmas Eve, the sky opened up and dropped a ton of problems, resulting in the biggest snowstorm Kansas City has seen in a long time. The kind of apocalyptic blizzard that makes those old chestnuts like ice storms and tornados seem tame in comparison. Due to the storm, my plans to go to Omaha for Christmas had already been scrubbed, keeping me here to make extra-sure I'd be ready for my pod to arrive on Monday. So I'd sucked it up and stayed home and made dinner and watched Die Hard 2, like all good Americans should. And then I looked outside.

 Moving cross-country is a pretty stressful endeavor, but I've kept my chin up. For every burst of fear, there was a bigger stretch of excitement. New city! New state! New time zone! I focused on the things I would be doing, the places I'd be seeing, the people I'd be meeting. It has been, through it all, an adventure. But moving cross-country when mother nature decides to get all literal with her Bing Crosby fandom, that's like moving overseas. And then moving back 2 weeks later. For kicks. Where once my biggest concern was "Where will they put the pod, in the parking lot or on the street?" now my big concern is whether or not I'll be able to get out of here by the 31st. And this is not idle doom and gloom, this is a hard & fast fear with 10 inches of snow pushing up against it. The pod people, they won't put the pod down unless there's 3 car lengths of bare ground. 3 car lengths with a 14 foot width. This is small-scale geographic math, hardly worth thinking about, until you have to shovel it all.

 I went and bought the baddest-assest shovel I could find, and settled on a monster that looks more like a futuristic art-nouveau sled than a shovel. I wedged it into my car and muttered to myself "I'm getting the hell out of this town if I have to shovel from now until Monday morning." And it felt good, I felt reassured, I put the needle back on the "You're the Best Around" 45 playing on repeat in my head and drove home, getting trapped behind one of those bobcat baby earth movers, a vehicle that surely is the Rascal of automobiles. I parked my car out front (or more properly wedged it into a low snowbank) and got to work.

 Did you know shovelling snow sucks? Like a lot?

 I managed to shovel out a spot the size of my car, realizing about halfway thru that the snow that seemed to be tapering off when I walked out of the hardware store was in full-on snow mode again. Snow can be magical under most circumstances, it does tend to make everything prettier. But when you're up against it and the only thing that can bring you relief is the sky drying up, all that magical snow makes you understand why crazy people shout at the sky. I took out my phone and called the pod people, getting some fancy British lad who gladly moved my drop-off date to Tuesday. It wasn't salvation, but it was some breathing room. When I'd finished my spot, I decided to call it a night, the 45 all but unplugged in my head, the thought of radiator heat and a meal sure seemed mighty good. I helped my neighbor wedge her car closer into her spot and she offered to bake me cookies in a day or two to see me off. That was nice, another little spot of warmth in a Dante-esque frozen circle of hell I call home.

 Right now I'm inside getting warm, watching Die Hard 4 like very few good americans should, making plans on the internet, re-strategizing. From where I sit, I have some options, some of which will be spendy, some of which might collapse under the weight of more snow, but I'm trying to look past it. My thousand-yard stare is now 1800 miles long, and where it ends, something new starts. Now I just have to find my way to it.