Snow Day!

We're in the midst of a great winter storm. Schools are closed, government offices are closed, the buses are stopped - even the malls are closed! I took the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and enjoy the snow. You can click on any of the following photos if you wish to enbiggen them. I used a real camera instead of my camera phone, so they actually look pretty clear when they're enbiggenned.




The plow hit our street once today, but we've gotten so much since then that the street is pretty much unnavigable right now. The plow got stuck on one of our neighboring streets, so it left a big pile of snow in the middle of the street and drove off. I dread shoveling the car out after they plow again.




I love the way, when we get enough snow to shut everything down, everyone in the neighborhood is home and it's sort of like a big party; everyone is out shoveling (except me - more on that in a moment), chatting, walking around - it's really quite wonderful.



Here is our neighbor Kenny:




Kenny, who does not have kids of his own, seems rather aloof and one could easily interpret this as unfriendliness, although I think he's just shy, but he spends a lot of time with these two kids who wouldn't move to allow him to shovel out his driveway, so he shoveled around them.




Next-door neighbors Terri and Cricket. You decided who is whom. Terri and her wife Rachel are two of the best neighbors one could ask for.




Ms. Geranium (aka Luminiferous Ether) and Rona (next-door neighbor on our other side) out shoveling. Rona just got back from Hawaii yesterday, which was fortunate for us, since we were the designated shovelers while she was gone. Rather an extreme switch from 70˚ in Hawaii to Wisconsin winter.




Rona and another neighbor, Alicia, chatting about Hawaii in the snow.





And, of course, we have the lovely and talented, aforementioned and aforepictured Ms. Geranium. I injured my back a little over two weeks ago and it's still giving me a pain in the, well, back, so I can't really shovel. Ms. Geranium did all our shoveling today. What a gal! Don't you just love those leopard spots, too? Roowwrr!





Our recently adopted dog, Molly, who doesn't mind snow as long as it's not falling out of the sky.




While walking around the neighborhood, I saw through the bushes what looked like a pickup truck buried in snow.




I decided to check it out from the other side of the bushes. It clearly hadn't moved for quite some time and the person who plows the parking lot in which it is parked had plowed all the snow from the lot over the truck. The front end is completely buried.




In this next one, I climbed on top of the mound to get a look. Once on top, I sank up to my crotch in the snow, so I took this shot and went back down rather than go any further.




This neighbor's sports-car is going nowhere fast .




Some other scenes from around the neighborhood:




















Molly needs a lot of excercise, so I take her to the bark park pretty much every day. Since I really enjoy driving in snow, I thought we would go today. I decided I would take a drive around the neighborhood to see how the roads were prior to venturing very far from home. I concluded that it wasn't a good idea. Here's the car before I cleared it off to drive around. The snow makes it look like a mini-van, but it's not.




Back inside, a view out the front window.