Snow Fun Report

The snow started last night around 6:45pm. I was shopping at the Food Lion down the street from my house, along with 88 other people. I endured the long, long lines to check out, and while I'm normally a pretty patient person, I really was tested last night. The Mom and son (presumably her son? He was in his late teens, I'm guessing) standing in line behind me were a tad annoying, to say the least. I was just minding my own business, standing in line, checking out Facebook on my cell phone, when I suddenly could "feel" the son making obscene gestures at me. I won't describe them here, but let's just say that I turned around to smile at them and say "Man, this is a long line, huh?" to which they replied, "Yeah, I ain't never seen so many people waiting up in line for so long!" I smiled at them again, then turned around to face my grocery cart and go back to minding my own business again. Immediately, I heard them both chuckle and then the Mom said, "stop it". Then I "felt" the obscene gesture again and heard the Mom say, "boy, if you don't stop it, I'm gonna leave you here and you can pay for our food..." I decided to ignore it completely, and thankfully they stopped.

Anyhow, I managed to get out of Food Lion eventually, $100 lighter in my pocketbook, but stocked up for at least a week of some essential food items. By the time I left, it had been snowing for all of 45 minutes, and I was surprised at how much snow had already fallen! The streets were almost totally white - it looked as though it'd been snowing for 5 hours, I mean, with how much accumulation there was!

I drove Rob to dialysis at 8pm instead of him driving himself like he usually does. In snow, we just share the use of our truck, which thankfully has 4 wheel drive and nicer tires that handle snow better. Plus, the Corolla was already practically snowed in! The center where Rob does nocturnal hemodialysis wanted to start their patients a little bit earlier than normal, which is anywhere between 9 and 10pm. But the earlier start makes for an even earlier morning finish! So Rob called me at 4:30am to come pick him up! Good thing I am a morning person and can be ready and awake enough to drive in adverse conditions at the drop of a hat!

I passed so few people on the road to Rob's clinic. It's only 9 miles away from our house, and I'd venture a guess of passing about 20 cars total on the way there. And most of that drive is on I-85. When I passed by Honey's restaurant, I saw 4 cars in the parking lot, and I thought "hmmm, maybe we should stop and have some breakfast!" But decided against the idea... I just wanted to get back home so we could walk our dogs and then catch some more shut-eye.

Rob and I like to play in the snow, well, that is, whenever it does snow here, which is pretty rare. Last year, we had 2 separate snow days - 1 in January and 1 in early March. The year before that, maybe even 2 or 3 years before that, we didn't get any snow at all? Of course I remember the snow we got in 2005 - it was a half inch and a few hours later, it turned to ice, and thousands of people crashed their cars all over the Triangle. It was featured on CNN - half inch of ice causes metropolitan area of 1.2 million people to FREAK OUT!!! Anyway, during the 2 snow storms last year, we didn't get much more than 2 or 3 inches. Enough to play in and go "oooh, wow!" This year was different.

We received 6 inches of snow. That's twice the "normal" amount, or the amount we are used to. I can't go out the front door because it's snowed in! Sure, I could just take a shovel and scoop it away, but it sounds so much cooler to say, "my front door is snowed in!"

The back door is good to go, though. Whew! Here are a few pictures we took of the snow around our house in Durham, NC.

The first picture you'll see is a 6-inch plastic ruler that I stuck in the snow that was piled on top of our A/C air handler.

Then we made a few videos of us having fun in the snow.

Rob riding his bike through the thick snow. It's a little tough to ride through 6 inches of snow, as you'll see.



Here I am, doing a snow angel on the roof of our garage. Yes, on the ROOF. And yes, I am a GOOF. Hey, and a poet, too!



Now here is Rob riding his bike (and freezing his fingers almost to the point of frostbite because he couldn't find his glove liners...until after he came inside from playtime!)



And here I am, playing on our snow-covered trampoline. Fortunately, the trampoline didn't break. Too bad...if it did, I'm sure my video would be a viral video on YouTube in a matter of hours.



Rob declares, "You're the wiener!" Woo-hoo! My bike racing days are back...just kidding.



And finally, the last video of the snow day, is me driving home from Cary and making a short video of the road conditions near Raleigh-Durham airport. We saw a commuter plane landing and were very surprised by that, as we'd heard that all the airlines cancelled their flights into RDU today.



Hope you enjoyed seeing our pics and videos of the snow! Have a wonderful day/weekend everyone!