Snow Day!

Thursday was my first snow day ever at work. When I got up, I knew it was snowing because of the bright pink streetlight glow outside. I looked out the bedroom window and could see nothing. I looked out the front window and saw the same thing. Hmmm, the windows are frosted over, I thought. I opened the front door and still saw nothing but pink haze - the storm door must also be frosted over. When I opened the storm door I still saw the pink haze, but this time it was flying by at 30 mph. I could barely make out the neighbor's house across the street. Cool! SNOW DAY!!!

I checked the TV and saw that every school in eastern Nebraska was closed. I tried shovelling the driveway, but quit after a while and decided to wait for daylight. I jumped in the car and drove around for a few miles. In town with streetlights I could make out where the road should be, but as soon as the stretlights ended the road disappeared entirely. In places with no trees, it was an even sea of snow with no signs of where the road was hiding. It was like following a 4x4 trail onto slickrock - one minute it's there and the next you're out in the middle of nowhere without a clue about which way to go.

The boys were excited about not having to go to school. After breakfast we braved the wind and went out to play in the snow. Our little snowblower was at its limit. We had 8-10" of heavy wet snow in the driveway. The snowblower couldn't quite throw more than 1/2 the width of the driveway, so I had to clear a small patch and then blow onto that patch and then into the yard. It took over an hour to do the driveway.

We had a great suprise day off together. The boys played in the snow, played legos, played video games, played dinosaurs, etc. JP kept me busy with the new kitchen table light. I took advantage of the free time and organized my music library.

I called into work - I was the only one in the lab that didn't make it in. About 1/2 of engineering did not make it either. My boss made it in and declared that we did not recognize acts of God days - only vacation days. I changed my voice mail and took a much needed vacation day.

Today I went in and found that Beatrice had only received maybe 2" and most of it had melted. When I came home this evening, however, things had changed. The wind was blowing a steady 35 mph out of the northwest and it had started snowing. The road northbound was not too bad until I got close to Lincoln. The poor fools going south had the misfortune of catching all the snow as it blew in from Wyoming. Their lanes were snow & ice covered and were starting to back up towards Lincoln as more and more people tried to go four-wheeling in the median or ditch with their sedans. I hit an icy patch and started to do a slow rotation as I fumbled with my camera trying to take a picture of a semi that hit the same icy patch a few minutes earlier. I dropped the camera and slammed the 4x4 lever and was able to point my truck the same direction that it was moving. Now I'm enjoying my nice warm slippers and catching up on this blog thing. I'm glad tomorrow is Saturday - it's a total blizzard outside again.

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