Snowed In

>It’s been a truly strange and awful weekend here. It started out well, with dinner and drinks with some of our friends on Friday night. By the time we left the bar at midnight, the snow had already begun to fall and the city (we drove right through downtown) was invisible. You couldn’t see to the top of the sky scrappers and three blocks outside the city, you couldn’t see buildings at all. It was an omen of what was to come.

9 am – only 9 inches so far….notice the snow on the far left dumpster….

Notice how you can still see their tires? Not for long!

around noon

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17.1 inches of snow in Minneapolis from Friday around 11pm until Saturday around 8pm. The storm actually centered itself right around the Twin Cities so in an unusual twist, St. Paul and Minneapolis got pelted while outlying suburbs to the north which usually get hit harder, got far less snow. We were snowed in from 8 am on Sunday morning when Senor made a valiant, but failed attempt to get to work. They even shut down the buses and they pulled the plows off the road because of the snow. You see, it was not just snowing, but it was actually blizzarding. It was super windy so the snow was blowing all over. By Saturday night when the plows started up again, they were getting stuck. Plows. Getting stuck in snow. Then at 5 am on Sunday, the roof of the Metrodome (where the Vikings play) caved in. Madness all around!

1st Ave S – a major thoroughfare into downtown. The city and the skyscrappers are three blocks away. You can see a sort of vague shadow in the middle of the street in the distance…. that’s the city.

The front of our building. That fence is 4 feet tall and the windows are half covered in snow

Remember the dumpster in the first picture? 9 inches? Now 17 inches.

You can almost see their tires.

Senor and I managed to play a little bit in the snow but it quickly dropped to below zero after the blizzard was over (it’s -12) right now so that really limits how much you want to play in snow. Not to mention, we spent plenty of time shoveling and pushing our cars onto the right streets for the snow emergency. I have to say, being snowed in sort of sucked. It could have been fun but we could really go out and play in it and they day sort of just dragged on and on. I had been planning to bake, but I hate being sequestered in the kitchen while Senor is just hanging out in the living room. So we had a lazy day together, watching dvds of Friends and then It’s A Wonderful Life which Senor had never seen. Silly Senor.

Yesterday Senor managed to make it to work, but only with the help of a snow grater. For non-snow folk, it’s a giant tractor that chops up the snow. They are gigantic and utterly disturbing because huge tractors don’t belong in the city now do they? Senor still got stuck a few blocks away and had to shovel his way out. This was after he’d shoveled a 36-inch drift away from the front of the car.

It hasn’t snowed this much in Minnesota since I was 8 years old. It was so much fun to have a snow day. I remember building forts with my sisters and sledding down the hill in our backyard. It’s not quite as much fun when you’re a grown up. Or maybe it is, but only if you have kids to play with.

I managed to do quite a bit of baking on Sunday, although I almost burned one batch of cookies when my mom sent me a text telling me that my cousin had been found in Target, collapsed with no heartbeat. Within 30 minutes we got another message that she had passed away. She was 35 and she had her two-year old son with her. It’s just horribly sad and startling. She was perfectly healthy and no one knows what happened. We’ll find out eventually, but it’s just so confusing and awful at the moment. So the weekend went from jolly to snowy and a lot of work to cold and extremely sad and tragic.

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