SATURDAY--WARMER BY 7 DEGREES

[Nasoosie]

GOOD MORNING TO ALL!

It's only 20 below ZERO this morning, and no wind, so the house is farily warm as I fed the wood fire all night.

Those people in the southern areas are waking up to tons of new snow, with no sign of its stopping for a long time to come! I hope nobody is out on the roads in that area, as when I saw the CNN morning news, traffic is crawling along at an almost imperceptible pace. Some people have spent 24 hours trying to do a usual 8 hour trip. They have run out of food and water, diapers for babies and toddlers, (PEW! Cars must be beginning to stink!) and fatigue is setting in big time. They are saying that the storm has only just begun. PLEASE, if you are NOT on those roads, stay put until it's over. I really like snow, but certainly not on the roads when I am trying to get somewhere. My brother in the Philly area suburbs will be snow-blowing his rather lengthy driveway (all on a steep hill) today, for sure.

If the sun comes out today, I hope to get in some cross-country skiing. With a new covering of light snow on top of the older, deep, heavy snow (and I hope frozen so I won't sink through it on skis) it should be a fun time out there.

Coffee is hot and feels good on my hands as well as tasting great! Molly has gone back to the warm bed for a while. If we make it to the pond later, I'll take my camera along to capture what it's like here.

Have a fun day, everybody, and let us know what's going on in your neck of the woods.

[ohlucy05]

I am in central Virginia and within 30 miles the snow totals range from 3 inches to 18 inches....around DC it is 2 ft and for this area that is a lot of snow. It is beautiful and my granddaughter is waiting to make the snow angels and snowman. We got about 7 inches last night and are expecting more today. What is funny here is that everyone goes to the grocery store...like it is the last shot at a grocery store for a week. We are getting sleet now but it will change back to snow by 10 am.

People also lose their common sense when they are driving..my husband grew up in Oklahoma and is the driver for a few days.

And tomorrow is my baby daughter's 18th birthday and she is even enjoying the weather. She has come along way growing up and she graduated from high school early. She is working as a preschool teacher and will be attending college in the fall to become an early childhood teacher-she loves and it is her passion for that I am thankful. She is lucky to have a job but doubly luck to have a job she loves.

Hope everyone is having a great day.

ohlucy

[Echo]

GOOD MORNING SISTAHS!!!

SNOW!SNOW! SNOW! We've got about 5 or 6 inches of the stuff here at the house. Oh goodness and thank you for modern conveniences. And thank goodness for wood stoves. Power went out yesterday afternoon or eve at some point. No lights but at least there was heat in the house. Kelly and I were still out running around when David got home. He freaked out when I called him and he found out we were still out with 'his' Blazer! Got all worried and started nagging me. I'm not sure but I think he was more worried about his Blazer!!! He said, "Mom you've got my Blazer and the roads are crap and really slick". I said, "You've got my Blazer and the roads are really crap with snow and slush"! He said, "But your not use to my Blazer and someone could slide and hit you". I said, "Your not use to my Blazer and someone could hit you"! Reminded him that I had a heck of a lot more experience in the snow than he does so I started to nag him right back to drive slow, be careful and to watch out for the 'other' crazy drivers. He finally got disgusted and shut up. He wanted me to be sure and put it in 4 wheel drive as soon as I got off the highway. Really ticked me off that maybe 2 miles from the house I did have to put it into 4 wheel. ~sigh~ I would have loved it to have gotten all the way to his little road before I needed to do that. Even out on the highway there were cars, pickups and SUV's in the median and in the ditches. Altogether with in 15 miles we probably seen a dozen vehicles who lost the battle with the snow. 5 of them were on the small country road to Davids. There are a couple of bad 'S' turns on this road and that's were most of them were. But they were probably going to fast too. The weather page still has a snow advisory up calling for up to 3 more inches of snow today. Dang!!! Just might have a white Christmas! I am just betting that the 3 small ski resorts in the area are doing a happy dance and screaming with joy at all this beautiful white stuff!!! And it's all on a weekend too. Bet they will be packed today!

We were in WalMart getting some groceries along with candles and batteries when the lights started flickering big time. Soon only half of the lights in the store were on. Didn't really think nothing of it until a woman came on the PA system and announced that all shoppers were to report to the front of the store with their bugggys (carts) as all the computers and registers were offline and that shoppers were being asked to leave the store. Holy smokes you should have seen the abandoned buggys full of stuff sitting at the front of the store. Then we added our to the mess. Felt really bad for the employees that were working as some of the customers were giving them a really bad time of it at the check outs. And you know of course that none of those employees were gonna be allowed to leave until all the stuff in all the buggys was put away where it all belonged. We ended up going down the road to the next grocery store to get stuff. Did get 4 candles but not the kind I wanted, all they had were the scented one. Not much light but the house sure did smell good last night!! But we forgot to get more batteries!

Power is back on now, it came on at about 7am. I am really impressed that this little bitty town?, county? got it back on so quickly! Good job! First thing I did was set the coffee pot up and get it to dripping coffee. I had bought a tiny jar of instant for this morning and that's was David and I were drinking. Ack! Can't remember the last time I drank instant coffee. With no power last night of course David couldn't set his alarm for this morning. And his cell phone was dead so he couldn't set that either. He asked if I had brought my truck alarm with me? Yep, sure did. So had to dig that out, put the battery back in and set that. Dang good thing I had the 9v battery and that I could turn the sound down to low or the whole house would have woke up at 5:30 this morning. Mom's do come in handy once in a while. He left for work taking my Blazer again as they shut down the dealers and sent everyone home yesterday so he couldn't finish working on it yesterday. I stayed up in case he ran into trouble on the way out the road and had to call for rescue. He left me the keys to his Blazer and the keys to his 1 ton 4 wheel drive surplus military supply truck in case just in case! I also made him go up in the attic and find the 2 pair of winter boots I left here. 5 inches of snow and sneakers just don't cut it. It might be nuts but when we leave here I AM taking those boots with us. Jenny has her own boots she can wear.

Ok, coffee is hot and ready, got some Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies and Christmas Tree Cakes for breakfast if your interested! Not good for diets but oh so yummy!

For everyone that was caught in the snow area and for those in the areas getting all the rain? Stay dry, warm and of course SAFE!

Love to all

[avalen]

good morning ladies
the snow storms are incredible, so glad I'm not in any of it. Yesterday was the last
day of school for the next two weeks. We spent the last week at work having a
"food frenzy" It was like a pot luck spread out over the entire week, they divied
up the alphabet by days of the week, so if your last name began with A, you brought
in on Monday, etc. Course it was all voluntary but it was a lot of fun and lots of good
food! We also got our buses all cleaned for the end of the year inspection which starts
during the two weeks, I signed up to help with that for the extra time.
Then of course we had an afterwork party at a local bar/restaurant and I actually went!
It was fun, enjoyed watching the people dance on the dance floor, did not do any
dancing myself but had a little tappy foot goin a time or two. Nobody got drunk, or
obnoxious and I only had 3 beers the entire evening.
Today I plan to continue cleaning up and putting stuff away. Still going through boxes,
I think the worst ones are the ones packed with "papers" that I thought might be
important, which tend to not be but I have to shred them regardless.
Coffee is good and hot, a little toast for breakfast and off to catch up on a few posts
then its time for grocery shopping.
Enjoy your day, be safe in all these storms and stay warm.

[AlmostThere]

Goodness, all that snow! I'm sure allot of people that don't work weekends are glad they don't have to be out in it, but the travelers/shoppers/retail stores are facing a nightmare!
It's just liquid sunshine here until around Wed, they are saying. Ok by me.
Yesterday afternoon was my 9 yr olds Christmas program at school. It's always a crowded affair as that little school has way too many kids attending. My GD is in a portable classroom. She doesn't mind as along with heat, they have air cond. so they stay comfy no matter the temps.
I'll venture out to get a few groceries soon. I like getting into the store early as city folk tend to sleep in and around noonish it get nuts. Me, I still have way too much country in my veins. I'm generally up at the crack of dawn and ready to go. Come noon, all I want to do is stay put.
Praying for all you gals facing scary weather conditions.

[OutandAbout]

Good afternoon ladies. Just finished talking to a friend in PA. They have 12" now and it's still snowing. At least it happened on the weekend, time to roll over and go back to sleep, instead of having to deal with all that snow.I would imagine that it would be absolutely awesome to walk around after it stops snowing and enjoy the true winter wonderland. Cold and dry here.

All those that will be out and about now, travel safely. Linda