Yep, It's Winter

Week before last, the weather was fabulous. I did not have to leave the building for any reason. This past week? 3 days of meetings to go to; including last Tuesday when it was so frigid.

Meeting on Wednesday, late morning. And mid-afternoon, when I finally went on lunch break, power went out in the building. Turns out there was an accident, in the building where I'd had my meeting, and it blew a transformer (and an employee was badly injured, otoh, there's really good care nearby). Apparently power was restored about 7+ pm.

I got a ride to my meeting on Thursday, and a ride back, which I don't always get. The weather was a little cold, but fabulous.

It sleeted, snowed, and freezing rain came down on Friday. Early Thursday evening, work let me know it would be closed on Friday. That was nice. I had two cups of hot chocolate to celebrate. That wasn't my wisest decision. I used almond milk, but the hot chocolate mix had powdered milk, I think. At least, my IBS said it was milk.

before dawn

I stayed up late, and turned off my alarm clock. Guess what, I woke up about 15 minutes before my alarm clock would have gone off. I tried to go back to sleep, but got up and took a couple pictures.

I went at far as the front stoop and took some pictures once the sun was up.

Still early

You can see the grass

look carefully, you'll see the bird footprints

 I played some computer games, finished a dragon, and worked on the 2016 TIAS.

untrimmed, not blocked

2016 Day 6

2016 TIAS Day 7

Can you see my footprints?

yes, that's my car

a bit of snow, on top of ice

accumulation

grass is still partially visible

yes, there are footprints there, really

 I went out later to get something out of my car. I took some pictures after I saw my footprints are barely visible. I could hear the gas creak, but it held my weight.

CD cleaned off his car after lunch and we went to the grocery store. It turned out our eggs had gone bad. Oops.

Our road was still pretty snowy and icy; one of our neighbors decided to walk to the grocery store. She wanted some exercise and it's only about a mile away. We checked on the way back in case she needed a ride.

Once we got to tertiary roads, they were slushy and secondary roads even had clear spots. The highway looked wet rather than slushy, from what I saw.

I worked with some size 80 thread (remember the tin of thread?) on Friday night. Messed up and decided to put it away until I had better light. I found a neat little pattern on Saturday (from an old Priscilla tatting book#1 online, figure 20) and well, it's an old book. I finally just wrote it in modern and corrected it. Tatting meeting was cancelled on Saturday so working on size 80 was my substitute, I guess. 

Sunday, temperature finally got above freezing, letting snow and ice melt, to run off the roads. Then refreeze when the sun set.

Work started at noon, and my bus didn't start until 3 pm. I went to the park and ride, and fortunately, the temperature rose enough that it only took me half an hour to completely clean off my car. I love the long-handled ice scraper/brush Mom gave me.

Needless to say, the bus was very crowded. I was lucky to get a seat. I was not lucky on the way home. When I got home, my knees were killing me.

This morning, I learned I had listened to the wrong weather forecaster. It did get down below freezing and the road was a sheet of ice. I was happy I had not planned to drive. I took the local bus instead. Walking to the bus stop was interesting. I didn't want to try the ice-glazed slopes of the sidewalk, so I walked in the icy snow and along the ditch. It was interesting hearing the ice crack and watching the crazed cracks form under my feet. It's a shallow ditch so I wasn't stressed about breaking through the ice.