An evening to remember

Weather here has been sloppy, and is expected to be that way all week. We woke up this morning to sleet and a light dusting of snow, but nothing we couldn't handle. We have warnings of more to come throughout the week. I took the 4WD drive car and headed in. At work it's all rain. It rained all.day.long.

As I was getting in my car to come home, J called and said there were whiteout conditions near our house. Great, this was going to be a fun commute. He was just heading home, and promised to let me know what it was like by the time he got there.

For the next 2+ hours I puttered along in rain, then sleet, then snow, as the roads became more covered and the traffic increased. J called about an hour in and said he couldn't get up the hill to our development. So he was parked at a local car dealership waiting for me to come get him. He figured we'd eat dinner downtown, hope someone plowed the roads, and head home.

By the time I got to him, plans changed. It was apparent that no one was going to plow anytime soon, so we gave up and got a room at our local Hampton Inn. It's about a block or so from downtown, so we planned to walk to dinner. Worse case, we'd have a meatball sandwich from the hotel kitchen.

As we were leaving, a guy in the lobby told us that Main St lost power and the restaurants had kicked everyone out. And the hotel was out of sandwiches. *sigh* We decided to chance it, walk into town, and see what was available. Our only option was...
Dunkin Donuts.

So J and I had flatbread sandwiches and egg and bacon croissants for dinner. And watched the snow fall. And hoped that poor local news guy reporting on the snow asked us what we thought of it, since we had some choice words we thought we could use ;)

So now we're firmly ensconced in our room, with no change of clothes, no toothbrush, and no contact lens solution. I guess we'll sleep in the contacts.

I'm working from home tomorrow...

Anatomy of a snow storm

After dodging a bullet twice this snow season, we were finally in for it yesterday. They were forecasting anywhere from 6 to 18 inches, both here and at work. J and I awakened yesterday morning to a few inches and closures for both of our worksites. I settled in to work from home, and decided to take pictures of the deluge on an hourly (give or take) basis. Don't worry, I won't bore you with all the pictures. And I don't know how to do a slide show.

The little gargoyle on our front porch seemed to be a good gauge of what we were getting.

Here is Mr Gargoyle at 8:15-ish.

So I worked on some projects, sat in on some conference calls, had some lunch, and took some more pictures.

Mr Gargoyle around 1-ish. Note his base is covered, though you can still see the bottom of the pillar.

About 2, I decided to add our Christmas tree as a reference point.

I got work wrapped up around 5, and took the last of my outdoor pictures for the day.

Things were getting pretty active.

BTW, that's our Subaru at the bottom of our driveway, covered in snow. The wind started to blow a lot of it near the bottom of the hill, so we ended up with a 2' drift.

Mr Gargoyle, looking pretty much unrecognizable.

I spent the rest of my evening doing this:

New mittens for me!

We got up early this morning to find that J's work had a normal schedule, and mine was delayed until 10:30. Yeah, right. After digging out and trying to get out of the development, I turned around and came right home, since my car is not a sled. Apparently half of my co-workers were in the same boat. So it was another work from home day.

The roads seem to have cleared up nicely since 9am, so I'll head into NJ tomorrow and see what kind of winter wonderland there is in store.

No more snow until at least Monday. Huzzah.