We had a few flurries over the weekend

When I got a text from school on Thursday afternoon saying that the college would be closed Friday and Saturday because of the impending blizzard I was a little skeptical. I had seen the weather reports and understood that snow was coming, but it was sunny, clear blue skies, and relatively warm (I think above freezing) at the time and it seemed a little weird to be cancelling my class on Saturday when it hadn't even started snowing yet. And since I didn't have class, I also had no motivation to do any homework over the weekend. Why should I do homework if I don't have classes?? Friday dawned, and while it did start to flurry in the morning I still took the opportunity to run to Target and the library (my neighborhood branch was open for one hour on Friday). And then I settled in for a lazy weekend. or not. I came home and cleaned the bathroom and fridge. (yay, no more fridge-smell!). Friday night I introduced my roommates to the amazingness that is What's Up Doc?. Sadly, they had never seen it before.

Not long after we finished our movie the lights went out. We definitely got the best end of the losing power deal. We lost electricity (but not heat) for only about 2 hours, most of which I spent in bed reading a book by flashlight (and I didn't get in trouble for it!). When I woke up on Saturday this is what greeted me:

Drifts on our back porch

We spent the majority of Saturday digging ourselves out. And I have the sore muscles to prove it. We ended up getting about two feet of snow. So most of our drifts were only about knee deep, but it was windy enough that in places the snow came up to my hips.

Things like blizzards are a funny thing. I felt like somehow our neighborhood came together and bonded a little bit. I saw so many people I had never seen before out shoveling. I can't say that we were all helping each other, but people walking past had encouraging words, and just seeing that that there were people living in all the houses around me was kind of nice. And with the ban on driving it was kind of cool to get to walk down the middle of the roads and have it all to yourself.

The front walk

The snow we had was very light and powdery. I had hoped to build a snowman, but powdery snow just doesn't pack well (though it is certainly better for shoveling). In stead I made a snow angel. Or rather, I tried. When I jumped in the snow I sunk in more than I had planned on, and so I rather ruined the bottom part of my snow angel trying to get up.

Snow Angel

Part of our lengthy sidewalk