ice commercials and snow plow pictures

So yesterday we visited the commercial circus that is the ice palace. Not one, but two giant wall-sized TVs blast commercials at you with the sound echoing over megaphones as you walk in. I felt like I was in some science fiction dystopia ala Minority Report or something. I mean, here we are in negative degree weather, and they’re showing Campbell’s soup commercials on a giant TV that is literally so big that you can’t look at the ice palace without seeing it.

I honestly recommend you NOT go. Or at least, don’t bother going inside. There are a couple of neat ice sculptures, and a giant garish purple column spouting a two-foot flame from the top of it, but otherwise, there’s nothing inside you can’t see from outside. And if you want to go ice-skating, do it at a local park… the rink size will be the same, and you won’t have 50 other people trying to squeeze onto it simultaneously.

They do a light show that is perfectly visible from across the street in pretty much any direction. It’s nothing special, and in my opinion definitely not worth the $5 admission.

I was so upset about the commercials that I could have left after about a minute, (not to mention the fact that it was uber-cold) but Laura wanted to finish up her roll of film, so we stuck around long enough to get some pictures here and there. I took a bunch with my cameraphone, but only a few turned out decently.

We went home to warm up and Laura cooked a hot yummy dinner of breaded Quorn (faux-chicken) patties cooked in Campbell’s tomato soup. We both had a good laugh about the irony.

This morning as I left for work everything was covered in probably six inches of snow. About a mile down the freeway, everybody stopped, and we were stop and go for another mile. In that time, I started taking pictures with my cameraphone, mostly of just random shit, until we finally started moving again, about the time the freeway split down to two lanes, because there was a two-semi, two-car pileup covering the leftmost two lanes. Of course, I didn’t even think to get any good pictures!

Then, having finally accelerated to 55 for the first time that morning, and as I was cursing myself for not taking any pictures of the accident, four dump truck snowplows entered the freeway literally one car ahead of me. They spread quickly to cover the entire freeway, dumping sand and/or salt behind them as they went. I was stuck behind these giant orange beasts almost my entire ride down 394. I didn’t mind so much though, as I decided I would be able to redeem my earlier photographic failure by taking pictures of the plows!

First, I had to maneuver around the car in front of me. No point having him in the shot. Once that was taken care of, I whipped out the camera, and BLAM-O! –out of memory error! I scrambled to erase a few of the stupid random pictures I’d taken earlier, and snapped a couple of quickies before I had to exit the freeway–all this while driving dangerously close to the four giant snowplow-behemoths.

I wish I’d thought to empty my camera last night after we got back from the ice palace. I’d have gotten some pictures while the dump trucks simultaneously raised their rear dumper thingies… I think they had to periodically do that in order to get the salt to the back of the truck. Anyway, it was a sight to behold. But you’ll have to take my word for it.