The Ice Storm(s)

Sometimes I write these entries as a time capsule, just so I can look back at where I was and what was happening in the world around me on such and such a date.  Today, well - second day of a storm that apparently pummeled large parts of the country.  Yesterday was snow, and today it was freezing rain. We did our best to get the ice off the ground, and the weather was warm enough that we were able to get most of it.  But the corpse of all the previous snowstorms - one a week, seemingly every Wednesday - made it difficult to find anyplace to put it.  The ice had sealed up the mountains of snow on either side of the driveway, and the new stuff threatened to slide off without finding purchase.

I went into work around noon, and no-one in my department was there.  Very dreamlike, with the whole building only about one quarter populated.  I stole down to the kitchen just before it closed and had soup and sandwich, sitting alone in the corner of the empty cafeteria, alternately looking off into the snowy woods and back at the looped footage of whip-wielding pro-Mubarak supporters on horseback galloping through the crowded Cairo square, the mob parting biblically down the middle away from the breaking wave of the whiplash.  Twelfth-Century News via satellite.

Back upstairs, I wrestled with a few designs - one for an expo booth, one for a box carrying cans of touch-up paint.  The Rockland Community College website said I should check back at 3 PM to see if classes would be on this evening.  Last week's class - the first of the semester - had been cancelled due to snow.  And so was tonight's, as it turns out.

Yesenia was supposed to go back to work on the first, but the two-day storm kept her home, well past the point at which she was ready to get the hell out.  These extra two days were, as they say, a bummer.  But she's going back tomorrow, and thrilled to finally be let loose.  She made pizzas tonight, and then we settled in the living room in front of the fire and watched The Lovely Bones, which had been lurking in our Blockbuster pile for a couple of weeks.

And now the last embers of the fire are nearly gone, a dim red.  Yesenia has printed out her monthly rail pass, and is in bed, and I'm going to poke down the ashes and join her.  Goodnight.

D.

While Away

The 853rd snowstorm of the season is currently blowing through town - it's a two-parter, with snow today and ice tomorrow.  I'm still at the office, but it's emptied out like a ghost town and I'll be heading out shortly, myself.

D.