Roslindale

Oh, it's going to be great fun trying to get onto a 34 bus on Poplar Street in the Square tomorrow when all the snow and slush that nobody shoveled at the bus stop turns into a sheet of solid ice.

Poplar Street merchants seem to do the absolute bare minimum when it comes to shoveling, which doesn't seem like the thing to be doing in a business district that still needs to attract customers, but what do I know? Still, compare their work with that of whoever owns the building at Comm. Ave. and Gloucester Street in the Back Bay, who, Penny Cherubino writes, "consistently creates a wide walkway, clears the corner, and makes sure the storm drain is open and working."

Jax, the Roslindale fixture that has been closing forever (well, for more than a year now, at any rate) is actually closing, no really, this time they mean it, honest, at least, according to the signs today.

There's good news for fans of cheap stuff who can't bear the thought of walking all the way around the corner to that other discount place: The Globe reports Jax is being replace by a Family Dollar store - just like the ones in Hyde Park and West Roxbury.

Aside from the whole entitlement thing, I'm left wondering what this small thing (maybe 18 inches high) is normally used for. Dual Tinker Toys holder?

Storm knocks out service in Brookline, Roslindale, no doubt points inbetween, but how can you report if your Internet is broken and you don't have, oh, a 'Net-enabled smartphone?

Unless you want to get a flat from all the broken glass left behind from an accident earlier today.

The Bulletin reports the Roslindale BPL branch will be closed between Jan. 5 and 20 so its old oil burner can be replaced with a new gas furnace.

For whatever reasons, our street still has the old-fashioned "white" street lights instead of the yellow/orange sodium-vapor lights. And tonight, some of them were sprouting icicles.

Don't you just love going outside to see that your neighbor just kept going with his snow blower and cleaned your sidewalk, too? Thanks, Marcos!

Seven inches outside our house at 9 p.m.

Two hours before the snow started, a dump truck went down the street laying down a layer of salt. As I type this at 4 p.m., we've had at least four passes by plows/salt trucks.

Contractors lined up in their trucks at the DPW garage by Millennium Park in West Roxbury around 12:30 p.m. to fill up on sand and salt.

Meanwhile, a resident of Glendower Road in Roslindale wasn't waiting for any snow to claim "his" space:

Wicked Local Roslindale reports a student at the Roslindale middle school was arrested on Dec. 10 after he allegedly began walking around the lunchroom showing off "a 4 1/2-inch double bladed knife" and threatening to "get" another student after school.

Mozz, Roslindale's own video philosopher, confronts another tough question:

When the sun hits the Hancock just right at sunset, it changes color rather dramatically, making a trip up to Peters Hill in the Arboretum well worth the effort.

It's amazing how fast you can wake up at 2:05 a.m. I heard the squealing breaks and then the sound of metal on metal and cracking glass a second or so later on our normally quiet street. Within a few minutes, three police cars were on the scene (the police thoughtfully left their sirens and blues off) - as were a few neighbors (we watched from our bedroom window). Not long after, two tow trucks arrived, and then an ambulance - which eventually took away an injured woman. A third tow truck might have come a few minutes later, but by then, we were already drifting back to sleep.

If you're the parent of a pre-schooler who lives in Boston's West Zone (Roslindale, JP and West Roxbury, more or less), there's a new school to check out: the Boston Teachers Union School, a K-8 pilot school just approved by the School Committee. It's due to open next year, will be sorta, kinda charter-schoolish (think Lyndon School in West Roxbury), only still overseen by BPS, but run by the teachers' union. Click on the link for info on open houses in December and January at the site of what will be the school next fall.

Via Braving the BPS Lottery.