Well, that was annoying.
"Of course it rained, I washed my car."
Except it didn't rain. And for some time it didn't really snow either. If you attribute things as in the above quotation, whether cause and effect or the coincidences of a perverse universe, then the snow held off for some time as a while back a minor repair was made to the snowblower.
Last night it did snow. Just enough that I was debating whether or not to use the snowblower. I decided to use it to exercise it and it was a good thing I did. One tire was low. Very low. I tried the bike air pump to no apparent effect. So I shovelled out part of the driveway and removed the wheel from the snowblower and took it to a gas station so I could use the air compressor. Fortunately the tire seems to be holding air.
Once back I put the wheel back on the snowblower which took a bit more force than I cared for and set about using the machine. Almost. I had just gotten it started when I noticed that a control cable had come loose from the handle-lever. So I shut down and reattached that cable - noticing a little plastic stop was missing. It's not a critical piece, but it is something to watch to make sure that the cable is still in place.
After all that fiddling around, I did use the snowblower. I'm now really glad that we didn't get 4 to 6 inches of snow that was predicted.