Snow my Gawd!

Well, as you may have heard, we have gotten to deal with a wee winter storm the last day or two.  Some people would say it's not a good sign when Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel is hanging out in your neck of the woods, but since just last week I was doing some major moping about the lack of snow, I'm not about to start complaining now.

Here in the Tri-cities, we received anywhere from 4-8 inches yesterday.  The storm reached us too late to delay my arrival at work yesterday(it really didn't start snowing until 4am), but by 11 in the morning, it was conceded that the snow plows weren't going to be able to keep up, so an early release was granted.  People actually drove safe and sound, and my normal half-hour drive home took just over 80 minutes. 

Lesson learned yesterday was don't try going to work again with less than 1/8th of a tank of gas.  If things had really bogged down on the way home, I'm not sure I would have the gas to make it.  Bad Greg...

Wednesday the Richland School district caught a lot of grief from parents for calling a late start, and THEN and early dismissal, instead of just cancelling for the day. Determined not be 2nd guessed again, they called school off for Thursday before 6pm Wednesday night.

I was not quite as lucky...I had to go to bed on time, so I could wake up and hear my fate.  The initial call was a 3-hour late arrival(one of the negatives of a 9-hour day...you can miss three, and still have it be worthwhile for you to show up).  Since we were all up, my boss said him and my fellow supervisors should get together for breakfast at Sterlings(yeah...not safe enough for the 20 mile drive to work, but willing to chance the one-mile drive to Sterlings for biscuits and gravy.)

Breakfast conversation mostly involved complaining about the fact that we were going to have to go in at all, but, it makes sense.  I mean...we are a government contractor, and in this day and age of budget issues, we must appear to be good stewards of the tax-payers money(especially a day after USA Today runs a piece detailing all the problems with the Hanford Vit Plant...not my company, but Hanford is Hanford as far as the rest of the world cares). 

About half-way through breakfast, my bosses cell-phone went off with a message...work had been cancelled, and it's the right call.  Where-as Wednesday had been mostly nice snow, what's coming down today would be classified as a wintry mix.  There is expected to be another 2-inches or so of snow accumulation, but it's got bands of freezing rain mixed in with it.  I made the mistake of leaving my wind-shield wipers down on my truck, and it took 10 minutes to get the ice on them melted enough for them to move.

While the kids went out and had fun in the snow yesterday, I don't know if we are going to let them play outside today...the snow bands are okay, but those periods of freezing rain are pneumonia falling from the sky.  Strangely, I am the one saying keep them inside, while my normally cautious wife is pushing them outside. 

We still have power(just because there are not too many trees here in the desert) but around Seattle 100,000 folks are without it.  If we do lose it, we should be fine(except for the internet going away!).  I no longer have two cords of wood like I did in our old house, but we do have enough duraflame and presto logs to stave off the ice inside for about 36-48 hours before we would have to start burning books, or kitchen chairs. 

Plus, we have peppermint schapps and swiss miss.  Now, that's a good time.