flash.alert! winter.storm.warning!

reporting to you live from the snow & ice storm of the year in cincinnati, our lead correspondent [namely, me] comes to you with an update on weather conditions and other breaking news coverage. 

"thanks chris, well it truly is quite a storm out here, chris."

...alright, enough of that...

it all started monday night when temperatures dropped and the snow started falling. come tuesday morning we awoke to 4 inches of snow covering everything. being the dutiful husband that i am, i took up my snow shovel and got to work on the front porch, the steps, the path, and eventually the sidewalk - clearing about a 5ft path across my property and half the property of the vacant house next to us. next in line was the truck, so i turned it on with the defrost on high  and got to work un-burying the truck from the apparent avalanche that had overcome it during the night. well i had just finished scraping and clearing all the windows and taken a step back to check out the drivers side, only to find that the passenger side [where id started originally] was completely covered in snow again, it was still coming down obviously. ugh, i gave up and decided the heat in the truck could handle it - i was done.

anyway, we managed to make it to work, a lot slower than usual, but with no real problems. the roads were pretty bad, but we made it okay [i was actually the first one there!] and slowly some people started straggling in half hour, hour, two hours later. half my office called in, and the other half showed up late - some, really really late. karens office however, was a different story. im sure youll recall me describing her nazi-controlled craziness in previous posts, and yesterday was no exception. according to information we've received from fairly reliable sources, every person in her office was there, mostly on time, and working a full day as if nothing had happened at all... im not sure when the aliens landed there and reprogrammed all those people into robots, but at my office people were normal and acting normal - as they should with the streets that bad!

cincinnati is no where near prepared for heavy snow - just ask any cincinnatian[or at least all the ones ive asked]. they get one or two storms a year like this [or so im told] so theres really no incentive for them to invest in the very expensive tools required to handle this kind of a storm as if it were a regular thing [like they do in denver every year. i think last winter they were saying on the news they denver spent an estimated 11million dollars more on snow maintenance than they had budgeted - and trust me they budget A LOT! but i digress...]

this morning so far has been a slightly different story. first off, the weather had been reporting that we were going to get freezing rain and sleet and tons of icing as the evening and night came on tuesday - which we did. it started sleeting around 1 and karen and i ditched work at 3 before the roads got so nasty that we couldnt make it home. we were lucky and got home pretty quickly and smoothly before all the traffic got terrible and the roads got ridiculous. anyway, over night we were supposed to get up to another 4 inches of snow on top of the 6 we ended up getting by lunch on tuesday meaning that come wednesday[today] morning i was expecting some 10 inches outside and for work to be cancelled. so you can imagine i didnt even want to get up this morning, but i did so and the first thing i did was to check the window.

well there actually appeared to be the same amount of snow out as there had been when we got home last night, but id definitely been hearing ice pellets bouncing off the skylight all night|morning. so i assume we never actually got the snow, just a ton of freezing rain and ice. so we got up and did our usual morning routine only to find that when we got outside, the entire truck [and everything else for that matter] was covered in a thick layer of ice. and i do mean thick, we're talking 1/8" - 1/4" of ice on my truck. as you can imagine, scraping the truck this morning was an exhausting task and it took quite some time and effort. luckily it hadnt regathered by the time i finished and karen certainly had a great time sitting in the truck watching me... from the warm... gooey... center... gr.

anyway, so this morning we were supposed to have an electrician come out at about 9:30am to look at the house and give us an estimate so i was going to take karen to work and then come home and then after he did his electrician thing, i was going to go to work as well. well we finally got on the roads although they were definitely worse than tuesday[yesterday] morning - as we were approaching the on ramp to the highway we actually passed a salt truck that had broken through the road this morning and was half submerged in the road and its load was covering 2 lanes [which obviously had been closed at that point], it was a very crazy sight [id certainly never seen anything like it.... just how weak are these roads??] and i was worried we might come across some other roads that were going to cave in... not a good thing.

anyway, we took it slow and steady and eventually made it to karens office after passing several cars that were in ditches or off the road in some other fashion and a ton of slippery roads - luckily we hadnt slipped or slided much on the way. so i dropped karen off and then turned around to head home and about 3 minutes after i left her office the light ice we'd been having all morning stopped coming down and was replaced with snow. at first it was light, but it was quickly gathering on the roads, and soon it got more heavy and the roads got really slippery. needless to say it was a very slow drive home and i slid all over the road to get there. at one point everything steering related locked up on me and i went sailing off the road - luckily though, there were no cars around [the streets were nearly vacant] and i was able to just throw it in reverse, get back on the road and be on my way. but i did make it! [hooray!] and with no dents scratches or bruises [to me or the truck] to show for it. anyhow, its coming down really hard at this point - the snow is just relentless. they say we could have 4inches or more by noon on top of everything from yesterday but then it might stop. either way, the roads are going to be terrible at that point, so theres a very real possibility that i might just not go in to work today. 

right now its 9:40 and the electrician has neither called nor shown up at the house, but in this weather i sincerely doubt he will. at this rate it may very well be a day off for me and poor karen will be stuck at work and not be able to share it with me... 

but maybe itll get better, and maybe by 1-oclock ill be at my desk for at least a half days work. we'll see... for now though, im going to end this little winter storm update and return you to your regularly scheduled programming. perhaps later today ill get around to finishing the blog i started near the end of last week chronicling the weekend before's adventures [that would be the weekend of the 17th & 18th for anyone keeping score. we did nothing this weekend, haha! and it was FANTASTIC! i really needed a break...]

thanks for tuning in, we now return you to...

[and at the request of the brother, starting now all pictures from the blog will also be available via the link in the left *ahem* right [apparently im dislexic today...] sidebar for my.pix for your viewing pleasure.]