Up north and back

My Mom and I just spent five days traveling about 1,500 miles all over Michigan to visit relatives.  We were way up in the Keweenaw peninsula visiting cousins, in Munising visiting my uncle and his family, and in Traverse City visiting my cousin Amie’s family.  In between there, we also spent a night at the Mackinac Straits and saw a beautiful pink sunset on Lake Huron with the islands in the background.

We spent a lot of time on lakeshores during our visiting or just at rest times.  I love water!  It calms me and centers me in ways that almost nothing else can.  It is certainly right and good that I live on a peninsula.

Michigan winter

We have definitely had an unusual winter, where all the big storms were going south of us.  The state of Virginia has had a Michigan winter, and we haven’t!  But we finally got some picture-worthy snow last night (a respectable 8.3 inches).  So I took my little camera and got some pictures on my way to work this morning.

Under the Weather

I am not feeling well this week — currently running a fever but also having problems with my chronic health issues.  So I’ve been snuggled up under a double-fleece blanket for many hours today.

It’s snowing here right now.  I glanced outside a few minutes ago, and the snow is piling up and absolutely gorgeous!  There were no footprints so it’s just all one big blanket of white.

No Lights (…updated)

We’ve had so many severe storms in the midwest this spring, and up until last night, I was very lucky that my power did not go off.  But, my luck ran out.  My power went off just after 7:30 on Wednesday night and is still off 12 hours later.  Estimates are that it might be restored by 4 this afternoon.

I’ve only had three or four other power outages (lasting more than a few minutes) in the four years I’ve lived in my apartment.  And all the other ones were during daytime hours, so I could at least do stuff around my apartment via light from the windows.  Last night, because it was both evening and very stormy, it was SO dark in my apartment.  I have various flashlights and candles, but still.  I had to laugh when I went to look for my candles because I opened my linen closet door and then flicked the lightswitch to see better.  Funny how your mind doesn’t quite process the fact that those lightswitches aren’t working!

Being alone in the dark for hours with nothing much to entertain me was incredibly boring.  I read some of a book by holding a tiny flashlight up to the words.  I balanced my checkbook by candlelight.  And I went to bed early.  Woohoo?  I am using my laptop computer on battery this morning but that won’t last long.

I have one medicine that needs to be kept refrigerated, and my medical freezer packs are going to be warm by noon today, so I guess my mission is to find some ice or some person with electricity.  Fun times?

* * *

Updated on Thursday at 8 p.m.:  It turned out that my parents had power back this morning, so they retrieved my medicine and half of my freezer of food for the day.  I went to work this morning and then hung out at their house.  Every hour or two, I would call my home phone to see if the answering machine picked up (that’s the easiest way for me to tell if the power is on).  Finally, when I called at 6:45 p.m., I said, “Please pick up!  You’d make me so happy!” and next thing I knew, I heard my own voice saying, “Hi, you’ve reached…”  Hooray!  The power was back on, 23 hours after it went off.  So I’m back home and finishing up the DVD that I was watching last night (“Bucket List”).  It’s good to be home and to turn on lightswitches and hear my refrigerator humming.

Popsicle Weather

We had an unusually cool, though not cold, spring — the kind of weather where I didn’t have to run my furnace or the air conditioning for most of April and May.  It was perfect!  But, summer is here now.  Temps hit 90 degrees today.  Hot, hot, hot.

It’s days like these that I would like to stick my head in my freezer for awhile when I get home from work!  Instead, I either grab a popsicle or I dip a spoon into my sorbet and have a tablespoon of sorbet to cool off.  Ahhhhh.  Popsicles are the best part of summer. 

This is spring? Really?

Do you remember that soup commercial where the snowman comes in the door, sits down at the table and starts melting, only to reveal it’s actually a boy, not a snowman?  Today, I was that snowman!  I came home in the blizzard this afternoon, and my relatively short walk from the bus stop was just long enough for me to actually have a pile of snow on my head when I got home.  Normally, snow falls of your hair and it melts before it piles up, but not if it’s falling this fast apparently!  Crazy weather.

When I got to my apartment complex, there was a duck sitting in the middle of the road coming into the complex.  (Where was my camera?!)  The duck just sat there, looking like it couldn’t believe we are getting more snow and it was tired of trying to walk through all the snow that had already fallen and it was going to stage a protest right there.  In the middle of the road.  Go duck!  You tell ‘em!

Crazy winter

It’s the fifth day of March.  As of this morning, we are already within 0.2 inches of the normal snowfall for the entire month of March.  We are seven inches away from a record snowfall for the winter (which is saying a lot in Michigan!), and with more snow headed this way tonight (and another good six weeks of potentially wintery weather), I’m thinking we’ll break the record.  It’s been a crazy winter around here.

But I do have to say that while I was standing in the new snow waiting for the bus to work this morning, I really, really wanted to just lie down and make a snow angel!  If only I had snow pants. 

Slip sliding away

I had my first experience trying to drive up a hill that was solid ice this morning.  I didn’t make it.  Near the top of the hill, my car would no longer move forward, and after I had put the gas pedal to the floor as hard as I could (note: don’t do that), the car stalled and it took me forever to figure out what was going on.  The paperboy, who was trying to walk on the ice, just kind of laughed.  I ended up backing all the way back down the hill (note: don’t try this at home) and taking a different route.  Fun times, I tell ya.

The other highlight of my weekend was having 50,000 people ask me what I’m going to do to celebrate my grad school admission.  I don’t know!  I can’t drink alcohol, and sadly, that’s the only thing that came to mind.  *laughs*  It occurred to me to take my colleagues out for a round of drinks, and then it occurred to me that I have never in my life actually purchased alcohol.  At age 34.  *shakes head*  And then I wondered if I buy a drink for somebody else, who do they card?  Clearly I need to go back to school so I can learn these things.

The weather outside

I’ve tried not to complain too much about the weather (perhaps on the theory that if you don’t pay attention to it, it will just go away?).  We’ve had one crazy winter around here.  Snow, snow, snow, then it warms up to 45 and rains buckets, then the temperature drops to 3 degrees and my car doors get frozen shut (this has happened twice now).  It’s just been insane.

And today, it’s snowing so hard and the universities are stubbornly remaining open.  So I’m teaching.  I sang this to my class:

Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
but the math is so delightful.

And they laughed.  Thank goodness we all have a sense of humor!

Snow Day

We got our first big snow fall last night, and it’s still coming down.  They expect the final total to be about a foot of snow, which is a good respectable amount for this area in December.  And the temps will be low enough this week that the snow should stick around for Christmas.  Yay!

I’m just very glad that this is happening today and not tomorrow.  For one, tomorrow is my Ides of March.  (Recall the broken rib, car accident, and scary diagnosis on three of four consecutive December 17ths.)  I have a full day tomorrow with an ob/gyn appointment (including ultrasound) and two final exams to give.  And I will, at some point, need to do the errands that will not get done today.  So, today is a good day for a snow day, and tomorrow is a good day to marvel at the snow that fell and how quickly it was cleaned off the roads!