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checking in from Hot(h)Lanta
Fortunately, none of those hideous pictures of the highways around the ATL you've been seeing on CNN involved me or mine. (Side note to the mayor/governor: don't try to spin the mess when there's an international news agency with a front seat view of it all. Seriously, all CNN had to do was point a camera out their windows. They didn't even have to step out into the snow.)
So, we're home. And apparently will be home again tomorrow because after the total hash they all made of early dismissals, nobody is risking even the slightest bit of ice. sigh. I'm making my independent zombie-apocalypse evacuation plans now, because clearly, I'm not going to be able to depend on these morons for anything but a nasty end.
I wish I could say it's been a nice stint at home, but I've been running around with a bluetooth in one ear and my laptop going full-tilt because I have way too much going on, but at least I've been cooking through the West Coast, late-evening calls. Cupcakes help, you know?
Maybe a fun post tomorrow?
So, we're home. And apparently will be home again tomorrow because after the total hash they all made of early dismissals, nobody is risking even the slightest bit of ice. sigh. I'm making my independent zombie-apocalypse evacuation plans now, because clearly, I'm not going to be able to depend on these morons for anything but a nasty end.
I wish I could say it's been a nice stint at home, but I've been running around with a bluetooth in one ear and my laptop going full-tilt because I have way too much going on, but at least I've been cooking through the West Coast, late-evening calls. Cupcakes help, you know?
Maybe a fun post tomorrow?
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I think I'm going for blueberry danish tomorrow morning--I found blueberries that the kids picked out at their grandparents' and some puff pastry tucked away in the freezer. And maybe a pumpkin pie with the stuff I overbought during the holiday season. mmmm, plus it keeps the kitchen warm. :D
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I currently have 3 feet of snow in my backyard at home in Canada and the temperature has been in the -20s for much of January, except for a couple of days when it went up and started on freezing rain, turning all that snow into ice and the sidewalks into skating rinks. No school closures, although fewer kids showed up on the freezing rain day. The guy who ploughs my driveway comes only after 5 cm (2"), and ever since that winter when we had over 4 metres of snow, wants extra $$$ if we reach over 2.50m in a single season.
You see, what you Americans call the "polar vortex", we in Ottawa call "January".
But it's a question of mental and physical preparedness, and what is 'normal'. When I was in Thailand the week before last, 63 people died when the temperature went down to 15 degrees (C). We have ploughs and snow tires, and experience driving through blizzards or on ice (I once deliberately bounced my car off a curb like a billiard ball to avoid hitting the guy who was spinning out in front of me, and traded leads driving with an anonymous truck driver on Highway #401 for over 100km, when his and mine were the only vehicles on the road during a major whiteout).
This map on how many cm of snow it takes to close schools in the US is educational. (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/map-how-much-snow-it-typically-takes-to-cancel-school-in-the-us/283470/)
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And the thing is, I grew up in the Northeastern US, so I learned to drive in the snow and ice and hills. (Not Ottawa cold, but I did move down here to get out of as much winter as possible.) My dad had a snowplow for his truck that he used to help our neighbors with their driveways and clearing out parking lots at church and all. I still don't drive down here in winter weather, because of all the people who have no idea what to do with a little snow.
There's also lots of ice here, the kind that's glazed over the road because the temperatures are right at freezing and the stuff falling from the sky can't decide whether it's going to be ice or water until it's on the ground.
But yeah, the city of Atlanta (which is actually a small part of what this current mess is) only recently bought more than 3 or 4 snow plows. (In what might be an apocryphal story, they say that the last time it snowed here, in 2011, 2 of the 4 plows had a collision IN THE PARKING LOT on their way out to try to keep the interstates open.) Not that any number of plows / salt trucks would have helped this time, because the mess came when everybody in the entire metro area hit the road between 12:15 and 1 p.m. and the most massive case of gridlock ever was born. Then the bridges and overpasses got just slick enough that they had a couple of tractor-trailers jackknife on the big exchanges on each side of the northern parts of the Perimeter and we were doomed.
My best friend, who grew up in Boston and was driving an all-wheel drive Subaru, took 7 hours to get from right Downtown to her northern exurb home and said she'd have been there all night if she hadn't had the experience driving in the snow and that car (she usually drives a sporty Saab but went for her husband's car 'just in case') because by 10 at night, the highways were completely slicked over so she was using every trick she'd ever heard of to get up/down hills.
Anyway!
I hope you did get to go float in the Dead Sea and I will wait for pictures so that I might live vicariously through you. :D
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I wish I'd done more baking!
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I probably should have done a little less baking and a little more cleaning but where's the fun in that?