frankenstorm

Frankenstorm.  It’s already done the worst, (I think?) and now, it’s heading toward Chicago as a whole lot of wind, and probably rain. 

All of the talk of Frankenstorm has me thinking about Snowmageddon 2011 (or SnOMG as some called it?)  The one (I think there’s only been one) blizzard I’ve lived through, so far.

We knew it was going to snow.  We knew it was going to snow a lot.  I went to work that day, and was annoyed to find that no one in top management came in.  They were all working from home.  I didn’t have the option to work from home (I still don’t.)  Instead, I knew the snow was coming, as did the others in our office, but we were still there.

A lot of places closed that day, similar to most of NYC being shut down in preparation of Sandy.  On the day the blizzard was set to hit, we were open.  Not a lot of other places were.  The office was quiet.  We all complained about how long our commutes home would be, that we were “stranded” with no management, how were we going to know if we could go home?  We spent a lot of time looking out the windows, waiting for the snow to start, and looking at the news, and weather.com, and talking to friends, to see where it had already begun to snow.

We were finally ‘released’ from the office at 3pm that day, after the snow had begun to fall heavily.  It took me two hours to get home, my normal commute 45 minutes.  I got home, and there wasn’t much to do.  I had dinner (I think?) with my family, and was invited to escape to a friend’s house for the evening, which I promptly declined, because, while it would’ve been much more fun and entertaining, the six mile drive would’ve taken hours, and could’ve been fatal.

So, I went to bed early.  I snuggled in with some hot chocolate.  I thanked the lord that I don’t normally pray to that we didn’t have a dog to walk.

The next morning, I woke up and had some serious work to do.  My dad had stayed the night, and we started shoveling/plowing around 10am.  It took several hours to clear everything away, but it was fun to watch our neighbors with snowmobiles zipping up and down the street.

Luckily, we didn’t lose power, heat, or running water through this whole ordeal.  I’m thinking of my friends on the East coast who haven’t been so lucky.