But nobody does anything about it...

OK...I've got to talk about the weather.  If you haven't heard yet, we had snow here in the state of Washington.  What with all the global warming it has been awhile since that has happened significantly around these parts.  I live in an area that is kind of on top of a ridge so it is a little cooler than a lot of places and we have had 2 or 3 inches on the ground for awhile now.  Yesterday that was added to significantly.

Today the freezing rain came.  We had about 3/4 of an inch of ice plastered on everything.  Trees toppled.  Power lines fell.  Roads became ugly (although having 6 inches of snow underneath 3/4 of an inch of ice actually isn't a bad surface to drive over).  We lost power in the middle of the night.

I love that feeling when you wake up in the morning, look outside and see snow, realize you have no idea what time it is because the power is out except you do know that it is a lot later than you normally wake up on a work/school day, you hope school is cancelled and you get up to go check that your hopes are reality and you can all stay tucked into your little beds only to find out that....

YOU HAVE NO WAY TO FIND OUT IF THE SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO ELECTRICITY!!

No TV.  No Radio. No Internet. Most of my phones don't work because they are wireless.  We live pretty close to the local Junior High so I often hop in my car and drive over to see if they have power and more than once have found the principal standing outside informing folks of the current school status.  I can also listen on the radio while I'm in the car, but they like to only announce school closures about once an hour and school would start about 15 minutes after that so I can't wait.  Today my car is encased in this snow/ice sealant thing which is almost impossible to break out of - particularly if you are wearing slippers and have no ice scraper.  I went to my one unwireless phone and woke up my friends from their cozy beds.

Me: “Are you awake?“

Of course they weren't.  They had power and found out hours ago that school was closed.

Me: “Do I have school today?”

Him: “No, all the schools are closed.”

Me: “But your kids are in a different school district than mine...”

Him: <grumble>

Me: “There is this really cool website that my school district has that you can just browse over to if you could?”

Him: <grumble as he gets out of bead heads to the office>

Him: “No school...no one has school.”

Me: “Um...did it have today's date on it?  They had No School on there yesterday and they might not have updated it since...”

Him: “It has today's date”

Me: “Oh good.  Thank You.”

Him: <really loud grumble although it happened after he hung up>

Of course the school district couldn't announce the closure until 4:00 in the morning even though they knew an ice storm was coming the previous evening.

I didn't get into work until about 2:00 in the afternoon.  Got to drive over a bunch of power lines to get in - gotta love that.  This looks like we could be without power for days.  Add that to the fact that the garbage man hasn't been to our neighborhood now for 3 weeks (earlier snow and holidays) and I'm ready to move to Hawaii.

If I can just convince Uncle Bill to relocate the head office.