Jeff just took this artsy long-exposure photo of the view from my home office window. Lo and behold the insanity of Snowverkill. Brick walls have blossomed with snow-lichens. All day the winds have blown like something out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel. I distinctly remember a passage in one of those books where they had to string a rope between the house and the barn so they could go out and feed + water the cattle in the barn without getting lost in the white-out of a Dakota blizzard. DC is kinda feeling that vibe today. Which is insane. DC = south of the Mason-Dixon, = "a city of northern hospitality and southern efficiency" = we do not have snow. We have long, sultry, 2000% humidity summers wherein the most one can stand to do is to smoke expensive cigars and eat heirloom tomatoes while rocking in a rocking chair and sipping gin rickeys. We are not prepared for all these wintry shenanigans. The freaking National Guard is out and trying to plow. Madness.
In good news, I have not choked on anything or ridden a combustible conveyance these 24 hours. I was scheduled to take a trip in the snow today to deliver service copies of a filing to the post office (about 2/3 of a mile away), but my boss emailed me in the morning and put the kibosh on that, for which I was quite grateful (and which was just as well, because, unbeknownst to me, all DC post offices closed at 11 am out of sheer panic). Had I ventured out into the snow this morning, I would have likely met the same fate as the Scott Antarctic Expedition. Instead I filed the submission online, with a service certificate that said "I will serve with hard copies as soon as it is practicable to do so." Which ain't right now, fer sure. Ay-ay-ay.
Jeff says he would have stopped me had I tried to go out, which is good. Nevertheless, I dressed in my best snow gear, with long underwear and giant socks that I bought prior to a 1998 ski trip to Andorra. I also found the ski goggles i bought for the trip and fitted them inside with an old pair of teensy eyeglasses small enough to fit inside the goggle lenses. Despite these precautions, I would probably have died. And if I made it to the post office, only to find it closed, I would have become a modern Vesuvius: a small, bright, hot spark among the hideous snow.
For more pictures and an accurate psychological portrait of this hellscape, check out Ryan's blog. In the meantime, there's a possibility we'll be getting MORE SNOW next week. Isn't that....funny?////??? HEE EHHE Excuse me while I devolve into hysterical Victorian insanity mode...
posted by Reen |link| 4 comments
