Doris – Page 213 – Just regular folks.

Snow. It continues. We are trying to not go crazy.

Hello loves,

We just got an email saying that school is cancelled for tomorrow (Thurs.) – it’s a real mess. The roads are pretty clear here, it’s just that some schools still don’t have their parking lots plowed or bus access cleared. In our neighborhood, the sidewalks are still sketchy, especially the parts where no one claims as “in front of their house”.

Vince has been taking advantage of the days off of school – the storm blew in just as he finished his last final of the semester, so there is no schoolwork for him. He’s been seeing friends or just chilling out watching lots of TV.

Edda has been in the house for days, though yesterday we took her to Montgomery Mall where we ate at full food court and ran into many interesting people. We shared a table with a lady who lives at Ingleside who said they did an excellent job during the storm, though she was relieved that finally she was out and about. Edda ran into a camp counselor at JCC who ran up to her and gave her a big hug. That was nice.

It’s always a little strange for me to see Edda walking without anyone touching her in a public place. It happens so rarely, but I suppose it could happen more frequently.

Last night we watched Zoolander in anticipation of its sequel coming out this summer (?). It’s a bad movie, but it had Donald Trump, David Duchovny and David Bowie making cameos. Jeremy and I both sighed when David Bowie came on screen – to which both Vince and Keyla asked – who’s David Bowie? Ha ha. Oh well.

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Today, everyone was so bored, we channeled a little bit of David Bowie into Edda’s eyebrows.

Sound Sleep

Yesterday, I went back to my hotel around 3:30 PM, watched some TV, had a honey ham sandwich as my dinner and went to bed at 7:00 PM.

This morning, I woke up around 4:30 AM. In between, I slept all the time. It was a sound sleep with 9:30 hours continuously. I have seldom slept this way – usually wake several times during my sleep 🙂

There is still a lot of snow around.

There is still a lot of snow around. Kids were home from school and will be again tomorrow. Jeremy stayed home as the Metro only opened the below ground stations today. I worked – no snow day for me. This was suppose to be my first week of class, my classes this semester are on Tuesdays (tomorrow) – those are cancelled too.

We haven’t driven since Friday at noon. Trying to stay off the streets so roads can get cleared. I haven’t even really walked further than the end of the block. Jeremy did make it to town center on foot today – he reported that the elementary school was still buried under a beautiful white blanket.

We are slowly eating down our food supply, collecting all the compost and waiting for something. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for because no way is anyone shoveling the backyard walk between the house and the compost pile. I guess I’m just waiting for spring.

Work

Today is the first day of work. Of course, this full week is all about getting proper training as to how to perform work in nuclear power plant environments. I have got several training sessions of this kind before and am familiar with the subjects. They are more or less the same. But, when I got my grades back, I was pretty happy and felt much younger. I got two test grades with scores of 98/100 and 100/100. Pretty good. Right?

On the lodging side, I called several apartments and checked out a better hotel. This hotel will charge me about $430.00 per week and the one I stay right now is ~$250.00. Of course, it is much better there but I probably will stay in this economical hotel for a while. As with respect to apartment, I need to keep looking.

On last Friday, I drove about 12 hours and, half of them, was under freezing rain and snow. Very proud of that too. Just like duracell batteries, keep ticking 🙂

Snow exhaustion.

Let’s first start with – Happy Birthday Nat! Last night, we were all stuck in the house. Jeremy managed to make blueberry/lemon bars with ingredients on hand and we celebrated Nat’s 27th birthday. We all agreed that 27 is the best age to be. Forever and forever.

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I’m now exhausted. My enthusiasm for snow is at its nadir. I just finished my second round of shoveling. Jeremy is out for his third round of shoveling. It’s not yet 2pm. My arms! So sore. My will! So puny. I’m trying out audiobooks while I shovel. Listening to Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life which is also sapping my brainpower because it is about this woman who dies over and over again and relives her life again and again and I keep losing my place because I start daydreaming or a neighbor asks a question and I flub the controls on the app (which then makes it skip forward or stumble back) and then I can’t quite decide where I am in the book because the same story is told over and over again with small differences.

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It’s a beauty though. Mostly because the power stayed on and we are warm in our house.

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Some videos for your viewing pleasure.

Snow Storm & Reporting to Work

By now, everyone knows the “Big Storm of 2016” that hits east coast. In order to report to work on Monday in South Carolina prior to this nasty storming weather, I left at 4:30 AM on Friday morning, driving south along interstate highway 95 and arriving at my hotel in South Carolina at ~6:30 PM..

First 280 miles was pretty good. After that, in Southern Virginia and Northern Carolina, weather turned nasty with freezing rain and snow.

There, I encountered several accidents. Two of them involved several 18 wheelers. The road was completed blocked with these heavy monsters and its heavy cargo. No one could move them easily and promptly. The road was therefore completed blocked for a long, long time.

But, one of them shouldn’t take that long, if it was handled properly. It happened at a under pass of route 95, at the intersection of a local road (over pass). Theoretically, even the road was completely blocked there, it was fairly easy to re-route the traffic out of and into route 95 using two ramps by crossing this local road. The detour was not long either. It was about 1,000 ft only. The problem was there was a STOP sign at local road crossing. Since no one there to direct drivers to ignore this STOP sign, every car needed to do a full stop before crossing the local road and driving toward route 95 on the other side of the under pass. With all these trapped cars, it took forever just to pass this STOP sign. May be, people working on the accident had a bad day and couldn’t think too much.

The last 100 miles of driving was not easy either because it was all under heavy shower.

After all these, luckily, I finally arrived at my training office around the Columbia Airport in Columbia, South Carolina. It must be their new office. Even the company sign is printed in plastic sheets. Here is the picture for that 🙂

Still more to go.

The dogs need to poop.

Our street is one of the first plowed because at the end of our street, there is a fire station. I just needed to make it to the street and then we could walk pretty well.

This was at 8 am. It’s now 2 pm and still coming down strong.

Snow.

We are patiently waiting for the snow. Because the two feet of snow will be accompanied by 30-40 mph winds, we’ve been warned repeatedly like children by the weathermen (ah sorry, weather people) that we could lose power and therefore we must be prepared. Like ill-equipped children, we all understand that the loss of power means that we’ll be sitting in the dark, trapped behind two feet of snow, with our electronics running out of charge and slowly getting colder – but how does one prepare for that? Do we fill our tubs with water? Do we call our neighbors and ask to stay at their house with power and, if they are kind enough to share their watts/volts/amps with us, how will we get to any other house with two feet of snow everywhere? We will just have to conjure up our pioneer spirit and eat all the candy I’ve hidden from Vincent.

Last night, as the city emptied out, I went into town and had dinner with Lana and Jeremy. Shake Shack first for burgers and then a round of drinks. The round of drinks may have been more expensive than dinner. Lana is excited to try out the infamous DC “happy hour”. In Boston, there does not exist an alcoholic happy hour. But in DC between 3-7pm, the whole town gets boozy on seven dollar cocktails.

The force, it’s calling you. Just let it in.

Took Mom and Dad to see Star Wars (finally!) at the *fancy* movie theatre in North Bethesda. In this particular theatre, you have pillows and blankets and unlimited popcorn and table service for food. We had lunch together. My dad had a good time telling everyone (all 4 people who showed up for any mid-day movie) that he took me and Donald to see Star Wars when I was 5 (just down the street at Congressional Plaza), and now, almost 40 years later, I’m taking them to see Star Wars.

It was nice to see Han:

And Leia:

May the Force be with you.

Old friends.

I had lunch today with Amy. She makes me want to run a marathon (kind of) – as she does about 5 or 6 times a year (or more!). Below, here we were in 1994, all on film and printed paper (and in a tree and I have my Nikon F2 around my neck). Above, all digital, baby!