It was a quarter to two in the morning and a Caterpillar front-loader was lifting mounds of snow and dropping them into a dump truck. This activity was going on across the street from my apartment, and since I was up anyway reading The Pioneer Woman Cooks, I didn't mind the noise.

 

I looked out the window--it was like watching Tonka Trucks. As soon as one truck was filled and spilling over, it pulled away and another arrived. It is February in Pittsburgh, and my municipality is efficiently removing 21" of snowfall.

This is what makes people dream of Marco Island. This is why residents of Pittsburgh take their two weeks of summer vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina or on a Delaware beach and bring back family portraits posing on the sand dunes to stack up on desk tops and office bookcases.