Friday, December 14, 2007

The Funny Things That Happen When It Snows

Lawrence walked into the house yesterday after 3 inches of snow and, like a little boy, started jumping up and down exclaiming, "Let's go out and play!!!" Excited, I ran outside and played frisbee with Lawrence in the snow-blanketed park across the street from our house. Unbeknownest to us, part of the grass was covered by a layer of ice upon which the snow then sat. I of course slipped on the ice as I was dancing around and landed on my shoulder. Lawrence, who didn't see the incident, came over to laugh at me for falling. But he didn't realize that there was ice all around me and slipped onto his back as well as he was still laughing at me. Serves him right. :)

While I enjoyed what I considered an idyllic snowfall yesterday, the rest of the city was stuck in their cars trying to get home. The city of Boston closed down at 2PM yesterday, causing the largest traffic jam EVER.

My poor coworker took 10 hours to get home, usually just a 1.5 hour trip. It took her 7 hours to get to a part of town that would usually take her 20 minutes. Another coworker made it in home in 5 hours instead of the usual hour it takes her. A third coworker tried to wait out the traffic in a nearby restaurant. She watched the traffic outside the restaurant move about 15 feet in two hours. The roads were so crowded that there was no where to even turn around and rest.

Another coworker was on the road so long that she actually ran out of gas. She was lucky enough to have a plastic gas container in her trunk. She walked to the nearest gas station where she got on a line of people, not cars, at the pumps waiting to fill their red containers too. Even with the refill, she almost did not make it home on the second tank of gas. The 3 lane highway she takes home narrowed down to just one. One lane was blocked with snow. The other lane was a parking lot of abandoned cars that either ran out of gas or were too low to the ground to be able to make it over the snow on the road. Her car crawled the entire trip home.

While the snow made most regret having driven into work yesterday, it made one man regret not following his dream. My shuttle driver on the ride home revealed to me yesterday that his dream was to own a plow.

I could have cleaned up these streets or driveways and made so much cash. Who would want to be out today while a foot of snow will be falling? ME. I could be raking it in. I could have been like Homer Simpson. (singing) Call on me; I'm Mr. Plow.

It's funny what snow can do to a town.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Snow!

The first big snowfall in Boston this winter has just started. We're expecting 8-11 inches today and another foot or so on Sunday. My getting-out-of-the-house inertia increases by several orders of magnitude every time the skies precipitate, and the coming days' copious snowfall has already pushed my inertia to infinity. I'm looking forward to watching movies, drinking lots of hot chocolate, and most importantly playing in the snow! In fact, Lawrence has just gotten home from lab early and already wants to frolic through the two inches of snow that have already fallen. The excitement of the first snowfall reminds me why I love living through the four seasons of the Northeast.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Mood Swing

I was suddenly overcome with a deep sadness as I was sitting in bed typing up a med school interview thank you note and listening to Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos' slow, mellow songs. I lost my motivation to go for a run, finish my biochem lecture review from last week, or even continue composing the thank you note. I'm not really sure what's come over me. I've been preoccupied with several concerns lately; I feel as though I've subconsciously decided to let them weigh on me all at once, and this has manifested in my conscious desire to do nothing. I just want to lie warmly in bed, listen to music, and veg.