Crazy Weather

Chicago has recently endured a massive "winter storm"- I called it a blizzard, but I've been informed that is not technically correct. I do know that as a girl from Houston, I never want to be a part of anything more blizzard-like than that. When I'm indoors looking out the window, I find it all idyllic and pretty- when I'm trying to drive to school and parallel park my car into a snow drift without 4-wheel-drive, I'm not such a big fan. I did take the opportunity to snap some pictures. I realized I've never taken pictures of the snow and I want to remember it when I'm bitching about the Texas heat later in life.

So there's a picture of me showing off the snowy midway on my way to the business school for lunch (the business school has by far the best cafeteria on campus, the law school's is by far the worst). And here's a picture of some geese wondering why the hell they didn't fly further south for winter. I think they were fooled by Chicago's initially warm winter and got lazy.

We got a lot more snow last night- yesterday afternoon it took me over an hour to drive home from the law school. They closed Lakeshore Drive after I was on it- it was insane. Cars were going off the highway, a truck got turned sideways and couldn't face back the right way, and my car got turned nearly perpendicular to the road and I had to turn the wheel and wait for the wind to push me back. I had a splitting headache by the time I got home, so I took a nice bath, drank some tea, and watched Friends re-runs. Inflicting admin reading on myself just seemed cruel.

Tonight they finally plowed the streets behind the law school where my car was parallel parked. It was a slippery slushy place this morning, so I'm glad they made the streets safer- BUT all that plowed snow ended up against my car. There was about 18" stacked all along the side and I wasn't sure how I was going to get out. I knew it would involve long stints with my little blue snow shovel but then a very nice man out shoveling his walkway offered to help me. I assumed he meant by shoveling, so I hopped out of the car in order to help. He then jumped in my car to my great surprise/concern (this is in Hyde Park... not a safe part of Chicago) and gunned it back and forth a few hundred times and got me over the (mini) snow drift! I was so thankful and pleasantly reminded that there are many more good people in the world than bad.

Now I'm at home, warm and cozy, waiting for JP to come home with our Chicago-style stuffed pizza. I hope everyone else is safe, warm, and enjoying their Valentine's Day.