Sunday, January 03, 2010

Plenty Snow, Plenty Cold and Bad Manners

Well, the Christmas break is nearly over and not nearly so many things accomplished as planned. The tree is staying until MLK Day at least. We have been invited to dinner this evening with some of our favorite human beings, visiting English people with a cabin high up on a dirt road in a neighboring town. I said yes immediately when they called yesterday morning, and then got thinking about the forecast. (See above).

Oh dear.

And they don't have a phone. We've tried emailing but to no avail. I even tried emailing one of their relatives in England. The problem is that I accepted without fully registering that today was the last day of the Christmas break and kids and I have to go back to school and work tomorrow! We would normally depart the Last House (now a weekend only abode) for our new weekday residence in Stowe, an hour away, while there was still plenty of light. Dinner, however, is set for six - when the frozen roads will be dark as midnight in a coal mine, with swirling snow lit only by the high-beams from oncoming, speeding pickup trucks.

Query - to be a horrible boor and just send Whusband to dinner or to brave the backroads with two kids and a dog and then to drive another hour through the dark to get home?

I should mention I have something like PTSD as a result of all the winter driving I have had to do over the last couple years...

Tell me what you think and I'll come back later and tell you what we did.

In other news, today's banner actually is, for once, a view from the house, as advertised. I stood at the the front door and took it on the one day last week when we saw the sun here.

The forecast right now is for five solid days of snow and snow showers. I have been known in the past to be trifle, hmmm, "superior" to southerners who are undone by a couple of inches of snow or temperatures that make barbecuing uncomfortable. Seeing a solid week of those little cloud icons on the Weather Channel just now, many with snowflake icons as well, makes me humble.

Maybe those southerners are onto something... Of course, it's freezing in Florida now too, and that is some comfort in a schadenfreude sort of way.