Winter!

3:00pm:
It's snowing like CRAZY!

1-3" every hour!

It's officially a nor'easter, but on Sunday it might be an official blizzard.

More later!


7:00pm:
My office closed at 3:30 because of the weather, so I went to Harvard Square to do a little last-minute holiday shopping in the snow. At first I thought that might not be a great idea (didn't want to slip and fall again), but fresh snow is actually pretty easy to walk on. You kind of sink in, and it's usually pretty dry, so it's got some grip to it. It's when it gets a little slushy or when it ices over that it's bad. Anyway, after doing my shopping, I went to a coffee shop and worked on knitting one of my Christmas presents while I waited for Nathan to finish up at school. We were originally intending to head out to Outback for our anniversary dinner, but all the snow put a stop to that. The city of Boston actually declared a snow emergency at 1:00 today--there is that much snow! Or at least, that much in a short amount of time. (It started snowing around noon today, and about 8-10" has fallen at this point, with more on the way.) So we went to one of our favorite places in Harvard Square, Bertucci's (a good Italian/pizza place). Then we headed home.

When we went down into the bus station, there were hundreds of people waiting. Turns out there was some traffic something-or-other going on along our bus route that kept the buses from getting back to Harvard, so some people had been waiting an hour and a half! Poor people!! And it was COLD down there, although it was at least out of the wind. We waited about 25 minutes or so before we got a bus. When we got home, we found our upstairs neighbor shoveling out the driveway, so Nathan told her he'd take over. There was no way any of us could get our cars in the driveway until it was shoveled out, anyway. Here's a picture of Nathan and Kara shoveling:


And here's a picture of our car, parked in front of the house. Check out the amount of snow that had piled up on the trunk. Or even the handrails along the stairs!


I overheard one woman saying that it took her 4.5 hours to get home from downtown Boston--understand that downtown is about 6 miles away! And another woman said it took her 7.5 to get home from a suburb. For you Houstonians, that's like saying it took you 7.5 hours to get into town from Tomball or something. Craziness!

Side note: Nathan just called me from downstairs and asked me to bring him two big glasses of cold water. "What do you need those for?" "I'm really thirsty!" "You want cold water?" Mind you, it's 22 degrees outside right now and feels like 12. "Yes. " So I took Nathan two glasses of cold water, found him having shed his jacket and with beads of sweat on his forehead from all the effort of shoveling the driveway and sidewalk, and that boy downed that water. Ha!

So you might be wondering what it's like to live with snow, or you Texans might. Well, I'll describe it a bit for you. The thing that struck me today was how much the snow muffles other sounds. There were cars around, driving on the street and all, but it was just much quieter than usual. I also love the sound of snow crunching under your feet. I don't know why, but that is one of my favorite sounds. Sometimes you can also smell the snow in the air. I can't really describe it, but it smells icy. :)

I was originally going to write about marriage since today is our anniversary, but the snow kind of took precedence, seeing as how this is the first real snowfall of the year and a real doozy of a storm. But Nathan did walk a mile to bring me some roses at work today. Aren't they pretty?? Here they are on our dining room table (if you're kind, you'll ignore the clutter):