Snow Day!
We've been pretty lucky in Chicagoland this winter--true, we've had some brutally cold temperatures and quite a few light snowstorms, but in general we have been spared a big dumping-on of the white stuff. Well, until yesterday.
We knew that the storm was coming. Anyone who was paying attention could see the heavy white band on the Doppler radar--shown on every local news program Thursday morning--marching north across the plains from Oklahoma. A whopper. They said it would start snowing about three or so and really kick in for the rush hour. Har! It started at about ten a.m., and by three the storm was well underway. We managed to get on the road by four, and it took us about an hour and a half to travel the eleven miles from work to home.
This morning, we woke up to this:
No way are they going to open the office, we thought to ourselves, and we waited for the call from the department phone tree. But no--the company NEVER closes. The building could be buried in snow and they would still be open for business. Still, the radio newsfolk were warning of dire consequences for anyone who tried to drive in the storm, which was still blowing lots of white stuff up the street. Given drive times, we would just about have to turn around and go home by the time we made it into the office.
So calls were made.
We were given dispensation to work from home. And we, in turn, gave our reports dispensation to work from home. So, it was a snow day, but a working one.
I'm not sure how much snow we actually got--the prediction was for 6 to 12 inches, and some locales had 9 inches at about seven this morning, but this is what had accumulated on the balustrade outside our sunroom windows as of late this afternoon:
Well, it wasn't like the snow days of old, when we would bundle up and grab a sled or a saucer and head for the hills, but it was a nice day to stay inside, avoid the slick roads and the cold, and catch up on work without the constant interruptions of meetings and ubiquitous crises.
What would have made it perfect?
Sidewalks that shoveled themselves.
posted by Cathy VanPatten at 8:37 PM
2 Comments:
We got rain.
LOTS of rain.
Lots of cold, wind-driven, bitch-ass rain which turned the otherwise marginal Richmond drivers, who'll stop at a green light hoping it'll turn red and creep through the occasional snow so slowly their wheels could freeze in place, into something resembling meth-crazed velocity freaks. I SWEAR they thought they could drive fast enough to outrun the rain.
Areas of poor drainage became lakes, umbrellas were rendered useless by the wind, and the rain blew horizontally ALL DAMN DAY!
But when I left work the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the weekend appeared full of promise.
Sometimes the Weather Gods smile upon us!
Ah, blue sky! It's been pretty cloudy and dull here since the storm (although the trees are pretty). It took us quite a while to dig the car out yesterday to go on our usual Saturday errands...the plow had come by and pushed slush and caked snow up on the driver's side of the car. Oh well... we made the choice to park it on the street and not in the L parking garage (although the trade-off on that is the long walk back and forth from garage to home... the overnight fee is now something like $2).
I hear the groundhog saw his shadow. Quel surprise.
Post a Comment
<< Home