Snow-way!

Following up on that incoherent and sloppy post from yesterday, I wanted to share what actually happened in the last 24 hours of my life, as opposed to having you guess.

My original holiday travel plans were for me to travel from DC to Portland on December 19, at 3:35pm getting me to the loving embrace of my family at 8:36pm on Saturday. This would be in time for a full day of birthday festivities for my father the next day, some shopping, then packaging gifts up and mailing then at the crisp hour of 8am on Monday which would start a very full and fussy Christmas week in Portland.

...other people had other ideas...

Not so much people, as the anthropomorphism of our global weather system - "Mother Nature".

I love strong women, and I even have had stubborn women endeared to me. Having said that Mother Nature is a real bitch.

Early in the week there was snow forecast for the weekend - the extent and exact timing not specific. Knowing that DC and Portland share the ability to flip-the-eff-out over weather and then shrug off the disappointment of what amounts to a spitting hissy-fit because, "well weather isn't an exact science," I thought very little of it.

It wasn't until approximately Thursday evening when I thought there may be an actual problem. What tipped me off was the absolute glee of my Legislative Director. There is nothing more enjoyable for Kris than adverse weather. She sits in front of her plate-glass window of her condo, cat on lap, looking over Arlington and out toward DC and watches as the little people suffer. Her high rise is her Olympus.

She was ecstatic about the forecast and all day Friday watched the Weather Channel and she had our browsers pointed toward Weather.com to watch the real-time satellite moving this blue and purple mass up the I-95 corridor. Meanwhile, my first flight was canceled. Son of a...well at least I was able to receive some support from the United Congressional desk which moved me to a 5pm flight.

I refused to acknowledged that this new flight may also be canceled, and held onto the fact that what ever was suppose to be coming our way was going to move through a lot faster than the talking heads initially thought. I felt blissful and safe in this thought until I needed to help someone move a car at 9pm and there was already an 1inch and a half on the ground.

My phone rang at 6:30am the next morning and a kindly computer voice told me my flight was indeed canceled. Lord. Ok. The kindly human voice at the Congressional desk offers me a 7:40pm flight from Dulles, but knowing that the weather is bound to deteriorate throughout the day and little guarantee of me being able to get the 35 miles to the airport without getting stuck in some van with 7 other travelers made me decide that it wasn't the Zen way to go.

Employing said Zen, I was told that the next available flight was Monday afternoon. My newly gifted relaxed state brought me to the conclusion that this offered me the chance at another gift: sleep.

Looking outside the snow was falling rapidly and was blowing swiftly into billowing banks a foot or more high. It was just 8:30am.

Zen. Zen in the face of 14+ inches of snow and a News Channel 4 naming contest: The Shopper Stopper 2009, Boom Goes the Snow and S-to-the-No, I think were the finalists.

I went back to sleep, warm in bed as the snow-pocalypse spread its doom across the city.

So when I woke up I decided that the best use of my time during a winter storm would be to be in it - despite the Mayor asking everyone to please stay in doors and the weatherman saying "you'll risk your life if you go out". I am not deterred by Chuck Bell at News Channel 4. Jim Vance maybe, but not smiley-Chuck Bell.

What followed was a walk down to the Mall and the Capitol Christmas tree, while warming up at the US Botanical Garden and gathering sustenance on the way at Eastern Market before settling into a double feature, sausages, a warm whiskey and a beer.

The Mall is supposed to be there.

And even in the most foul of weather Grant stands guard.

One of the trees in the Botanical Gardens...fog included.

The evening also included a major session of shoveling. I bought myself an emergency snow shovel at the pharmacy and cleaned about 80 feet of sidewalk.

Of course the day after a storm is always prettier.

Wow, I love a photogenic town.

And the day after the day after a storm is when I get to go home!