Coming Out of My Posting Snoma.

It's been a hot minute since I've posted. Snowpocalypse/Snoverkill ended up creating a Snowcation that lasted an entire week. That's right...schools were closed for the ENTIRE WEEK. That snow dance was potent stuff.

Despite having that time off of work, things were busy around here -- the impending return to work kept me on my toes...bracing myself for the backlog of paperwork that would follow. Things are still crazy at work, but I thought I would check back briefly.

Despite the fact that the snow is melting away nicely (although we are supposed to get a little more tonight), I am going to write about the biggest drawback to snow in D.C. That is the parking situation. Normally, I never have any problem parking in front of my house...it's perfect really. However, when you dump 30" of snow on a city that normally gets a quarter of that in a winter people and snow plows don't know what to do with themselves. Cars and streets can be shoveled out, but at the expense of any other car-less spot. The result is HUGE piles of snow on the side of a street where a car would normally park. Those huge piles then ice over and become solid blocks of ice. Since we only had four cars parked on our side of the street the night of the storms...there were only four parkable spots on our street. SAD TIMES.

Needless to say, I saw many scenes out of Lord of the Flies play out on our block. People putting trash cans in the spaces they meticulously carved out for their cars while they went to get groceries, only to fight with someone when they came back and found their cans tossed onto a pile and another car in that space. I even got yelled at for putting my trash cans out to be collected because someone assumed I was trying to save a spot. It was not pretty for a while. Fortunately for me, I had a nice stockpile of parking karma and always managed to find a space when I needed one. But...umm...I haven't been to the "real" grocery store since before the storm. Thank goodness for our produce delivery! And the convenience store on our corner!

Fascinating, I know.

Anyway, something that is fascinating (to me at least) is this! It's Jamie! Looking kind of bored! On TV!

Okay, so it's C-SPAN which probably doesn't count...but it's fun anyway. He has been working hard on the Toyota recall stuff and has been educating me on all the precautions I should take for my Prius. The good news is that most of it doesn't apply to me since I have an "older" model.

I'll be honest...after watching the first few minutes of that...I'm happy with my job that is chock full of surprises and adventure.

SNOverkill.

I know I said it would be the end of the snow-related puns...but I liked the name for the new storm that's currently hitting us. Gah! Another snow day tomorrow...which brings our total up to four snow days so far. Wow.

Here's a fun video I found that shows the snow accumulating during Snowmageddon...

I had a 3 and half hour conference call for work this morning and that tired me out. I have got to get back into the groove!

SNOtorious B.I.G.

...and end of snow-themed puns. Because Snowmageddon (it's official name) is over. Jamie and I survived with nary a scratch and thankfully, we never lost power. As an added bonus, the storm kept our friend, Jason, stranded in D.C. and stretched his original two day visit into a more acceptable four day visit. Hooray! Granted, we couldn't really do much to entertain since we were stuck indoors for the duration of the storm...but I can safely say that many games of all varieties were played.

I was beginning to get worried on Friday morning when 10am rolled around and there wasn't any snow. I felt guilty for my glee at the Snow Day without the snow. Jamie even got off of work early that day because people were trying to get home and the facilities were closing early. To celebrate our unexpected vacations, Jamie and I took a glorious nap. When we woke up (an embarrassingly long time later) we checked the windows and began brainstorming snow-related puns for "disappointment" or "flop".

Then...it began to SNOW. Really, really SNOW. Ever heard of "thundersnow"? It actually thundersnowed and the National Weather Service extended it's blizzard warning to include the metro area. I was glued to the window. In the end, we had a record-breaking snowfall -- the 4th largest in D.C.'s history. 27.5" of snowfall with 18.2" of new accumulation (at Reagan National Airport). This is what it looks like when we have that much snowfall (although, you may note that the storm is still not over in these pictures)...

Our gate before the first round of shoveling (about 1/2 of the way through the storm).

Sharing the road. Our street is actually really well-plowed compared to most others, so it was pretty well-used by pedestrians, cars, and skiers.

Okay, so this isn't "my" Prius (it's my neighbor's), but the important thing is that you wouldn't even know that there is not a red car under there.

X-country skiing in front of the Capitol Building.

JLo and J-Bomb in front of The Supreme Court.

SNOW much fun! (...so maybe that was the last pun.)

Snomageddon was sufficiently large enough to shutdown the Hill tomorrow because the roads are still really bad. I also am getting another Snow Day tomorrow...so I'm beginning to cross over from feeling so excited about the day off, to panicked about the workload when we return. I spent a good five or six hours tonight working in the hopes of combatting some of that.

In addition, I am supposed to take a work-related trip to Williamsburg, VA on Tuesday. I have taken this trip every year ever since starting at Prep, and every year it is accompanied by some weather-related event. So, when I woke up this morning and saw that there was ANOTHER snow storm approaching and expected to hit D.C. on Tuesday, I vowed to worm my way out of it if weather looked bad on Tuesday morning.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times...well, that would make me an idiot.

Silenced.

Quite literally the second I published that last post, my phone buzzed with the sweet answer to my prayers...

SNOW DAY!

I [heart] my beautiful public charter school that no longer follows DCPS inclement weather policy. And now...a laughing baby: (my personal favorite moment is at 35 seconds when he totally has that "aw man you fooled me again" toss of his head and laugh)

Snowmageddon.

Okay. I won't spend too much more heartache on this, but after celebrating the fact that our school finally decide to depart from DCPS (which never closes)...DCPS does the unthinkable and decides to close early tomorrow. DCPS! Early dismissal!!

Of course now that we are not tied to DCPS and their inclement weather closing policy we will be open for regular school hours tomorrow. Dagnabbit!

snOMG!

Remember that little pseudo-blizzard we had on Jamie's birthday? Apparently, it's twin storm is hitting DC tomorrow. The weather service is predicted 18 to 24 inches of snow! IN D.C.!!! Of course, we couldn't have a storm disrupt the regular school day, so it's predicted to hit at the most annoying time of the day: late enough that they wouldn't close schools, but early enough to make it really difficult to leave. Well, shoot.

This is the second weekend in a row that we have had significant snow on the weekend. The dinky little snow event that we had on Tuesday night didn't cut it. I excused Snowpocalypse '09 because I figured it was some freak event -- it was officially the 7th biggest snow storm DC has ever had (it hasn't been added to the list yet, but it was officially counted as 16.4") since those little American meteorologists began recording such things -- and it was so beautiful that I couldn't get mad at it for missing the school week by a few hours. But for it to happen twice in two months? That's just Mother Nature being spiteful.

I WANT MY SNOW DAY! It's time for the annual (or maybe biannual) snow dance...