No Longer Snowed In

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Work has been busy, so has my social life, and then this week we got more than a foot and a half of snow. The snowstorm left us without power for 36 hours and without phones & internet access until this morning. Susan and I were making necessary calls on our cells (hoping we'd get power back before our batteries died), melting snow on our gas stove so that we would have water with which to flush the toilets, and bringing in lots of wood for the fireplace in order to keep warm. Thankfully, I had a stockpile of bottled water and regular batteries and Susan has a NOAA radio. I had a lot of work to catch up on once I made it into the office but, if you check out my organization's website, you'll see the results of some of my work on the homepage.

Finally, I thought I'd share some pictures I took of our beautiful winter wonderland (though I know that some of you have seen more than enough snow recently). Enjoy!

The view from Susan's deck doesn't really do the depth of the snow justice, because that's where we took a lot of snow from since it was easy to reach with our slippers on, but it is the best example I have.

Finally our driveway, notice all the dark stuff? The temperatures have been so warm, even during the snowstorm, that the ground is a muddy mess. We actually asked our plow driver to stop plowing, though there were still some moguls in the way, because if he didn't we'd get stuck!

Oh, and I couldn't resist sharing this picture of Casey. She had so much fun bounding through the snow that she exhausted herself. I call this one, "Pooped Pup"!

Organizing, 'Nuff Said

Well, maybe not. I was quite productive this weekend, after experiencing a rough work week. Work wasn't bad, just tiring and a little stressful. I did, however, complete my third topical story for our website and it was up all of this long weekend. I ran around completing errands yesterday and now have a six shelf, cloth, organizer hanging in my closet (I needed someplace to put my sweaters), a new 4GB USB flash drive ($12), and "Fringe" season 1 ($9.99 at Best Buy).

I am a little ticked at Best Buy, though, and am not really sure I want to be giving them a shout out in this blog. They changed their rewards program so that points now expire at the end of every year. This would be fine, I think, if points posted right away, but they don't. They take 35 days to post. I don't think corporate has realized what this means to consumers and I'm considering writing them a letter. I mean, there will be a month, or a month and a half, each year when, assuming I can get the same item for the same price at another store, I will not have any incentive to give my money to Best Buy. It also means that I just lost 131 points and have to start over. GRUMP! :)

Soup & Games Night was Awesome!

I had a blast again tonight. I played "Hearts" with a large, and rotating, group of people (sometimes we played solo and other times with a partner). I think there were seven or eight people sitting around the table for the last hand and there were three teams of two that time. I also got to play "Cosmic Wimpout" with two of the game's creators. How cool is that?! I was very rusty and didn't get very far but it sure was interesting. At the very end of the night, we demonstrated the game "Apples to Apples" for the folks at our table who weren't familiar with it. We laughed a lot the last time we played it and have put it on the agenda for next time. If you aren't familiar with these games, I suggest you Google them as they are lots of fun.