When "should" turns into "must".

With a couple days of above-freezing temperatures and a bit of gentle rain, I can see the lawn (and the street) for the first time in nearly three weeks.

We're scheduled for an unseasonably balmy New Year's Eve before returning to our regularly scheduled winter by Sunday.

That'll mean more opportunities for shoveling snow. Like many cities, Indy has sidewalk-clearing ordinances, although I’ve never heard of them being enforced. Fortunately, I don't have to deal with any petty frozen precipitation tyrants like the one Marko wrote about:

...a perfect example of what happens when a powerful bureaucracy gives a little man a badge, a ticket book, and legal authority to lord it over his fellow citizens. He doesn’t just do his job impartially; he relishes the power he holds, and he looks forward to using that power as often as he can.

I know I shovel our walk (and our neighbor’s) just for the smug sense of superiority it gives me to be one of the first people on the block to have a tidy, well-shoveled sidewalk. (I shovel the neighbor’s because it’s no big deal while I’ve got the shovel out. And she mows our front yard while she’s doing hers.) I can guarantee that if I had to deal with an Inspektor Tankle, my shoveling would be a lot more grudging, and I'd only do the minimum required to avoid the fine, mostly out of sheer cussedness.

This is a splendid example of the joys of government, which will always turn a “you should” into a “you must”.