Out on the street:
Through the woods:
Over the bridge:
After Jeremy spent most of Sunday digging out our driveway – the plow came by last night and dumped a whole bunch of snow in front of our drive.
Our beautiful shoveled sidewalk; reburied under boulders of snow:
More snow pictures coming tomorrow – 10 to 24 MORE inches predicted for tomorrow!
There was a lot of crying today and grumpiness as Vincent is playing, playing, playing in the snow without a lot of food or rest. It’s a little bit trying on all of us. They have canceled school on Monday and Tuesday, so we are in for at least 2 more days of being trapped in the house. Weather reports are forecasting for more snow on Tuesday.
We did manage to go to Welsh Park for a round of sledding:
Yow-za!
We were very lucky – neither power, heat nor internet (we know our priorities) went down. Lots of trees in the neighborhood went down – snapping lots of above ground lines:
First priority: Dig enough so Ruby can pee.
Second priority: Get Edda all suited up and bring her outside for at least 5 minutes, even though she’d much rather stay at home and watch Curious George for the 14 millionth time. (Don’t let these photos fool you, she was happy for 4.5 minutes and then pretty much started complaining to go back inside.)
Third priority: Let Vince play outside from sun up until sun down.
Kowabunga!
I sent Jeremy and Vince out to the grocery store last night to “stock up” because right now we are in the process of being snowed in under 24-30 inches of snow. These are the essentials they picked up:
Today is Friday, an off-day for the Plant with 4/10 schedule. It was raining a lot, therefore, few traffic was on the beach road, alongside mountain slopes, leading to the Plant.
It was still very dark this morning and I drove in front of a pack of three cars. Since the guy at my back was a tailgater, I pulled my car over to let them pass. After their passing, I was back on the road again. But, this time, I was the last one.
Just a couple of seconds later, I saw the first car pulled over at the side and stopped. The second one was a pick-up truck which kept going but slowing down considerably. Suddenly, I saw a big rock in front of me, right on the road with a lot of smaller ones. I stepped on my brake and tried to steer away from the big one. But, still with a big bang, my rental car ran over it.
After stopping, I flagged down the incoming cars and removed the rock from the road to its side. Then, I started to inspect my car. It was okay with no apparent damages. The owner of first car walked toward me and said his car was toasted because he hit two big rocks which included the one that I just hit. He called 911 for help.
I thought that I was very lucky to let him go first. Or, I were be the one that hit those two rocks with full speed, not just one at much slower speed. But, I felt very sorry for him though.
It shook me up a lot and it took much longer for me get to work this morning.
So since I know I’m going to be trapped inside the house for the next 2-3 days, I’ve been making an effort to get out of the house more. I went to work on Tuesday and on Wednesday, I went to a quilting group and today I went to a book club. OK, the quilting group AND the reading group were full of retired ladies, I’m not sure I fit in exactly – although I have to admit I do enjoy hanging out with folks that are not the same age as me. It brings a fresh new perspective on life. All the young, single people worried about their weekend plans, all the older ladies trying to avoid driving at night, ha ha. Me back then and me in the future.
On a completely different topic, Vince has been a little moody for a day or so which is completely unlike him. He says he’s sick, but he doesn’t have a fever, cough or anything and when I ask him what’s wrong, he’s not very specific about his ailments. I suspect he’s just exhausted from the constant playing in the snow with the kids in the neighborhood. The past week, it’s been a snowstorm every 3 days and then there is another one is coming this weekend. Vince can play in the snow for 8 hours straight – that kid has endurance. Here he is enjoying pizza with some pals after a full day of snow play.
Today, we are going to have a “Progress Luncheon” – not bad, considering that we just showed up in office a week ago. Evidently, Mom & I have been making a lot of progress 🙂
Last weekend, we hiked two days and felt pretty good. The waves were high and there were no sea weeds in sight. Very few birds either.
Still in a funk. Don’t know why. I think I need to get out of the house more. My natural state is to be at home and to watch TV or surf the web. It easily leads to being in a funk.
This is what the world looked like this morning (school was canceled and they are predicting another foot for this weekend):
Look what a good job Jeremy did on the bread. It only took 24 hours or so.
It’s snowing again tonight. This is the snowiest winter I’ve ever remembered for a Maryland winter. Jeremy, who didn’t grow up here and keeps commenting “We live in the South! It’s not suppose to snow in the South!”, is a bit shocked to see so much snow and is sore from shoveling so many times.
This past weekend, we went to Lakeforest Mall – which was my high school hang out mall – but it’s lost a little of that high school magic. It’s been overshadowed by some of the fancier malls around the area. When I was in high school, Lakeforest had an awesome water fountain in the central atrium. They’ve turned off the fountain and built over it a children’s playscape which kind of covers most of the fountain, but not all of it. It looks a little kludgy. Oh well, no matter, the kids enjoyed the soft area playscape. Actually, Vince is getting to be almost too old for it, running around all these barely mobile teetering 12-18 month olds…
fyi
Among those concerned is Ellen Vancko, nuclear energy and climate change project manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a statement posted on its website, she says:
Both the Congressional Budget Office (2003) and the Government Accountability Office (2008) have estimated that the risk of default for new nuclear reactors could be as high as 50 percent based on the industry’s history of cost overruns and plant cancellations. In 2007, six of Wall Street’s largest investment banks told the Department of Energy that they were unwilling to accept any financial risk for nuclear power loans.
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Of 26 new nuclear reactor license applications submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2007, nine have been canceled or suspended indefinitely in the last 10 months. Ten more have been delayed by one to five years. The Tennessee Valley Authority has canceled plans to revive a partially built unit.
Much of this chaos is because cost estimates for new reactors tripled while natural gas prices declined precipitously.
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