Well...that was interesting. Ice storm!

Lazy photo post today, because I'm still in recovery.  We had a beautiful snow storm on Wednesday, and I was stuck at home, but it was kinda pleasant: I had electricity and heat and all, and I baked bread and read and played music and watched the snow fall.

Pretty snow...

Wednesday night, it was supposedly going to warm up rather rapidly overnight as the snow turned to freezing rain and then plain rain.  The roads were predicted to be bad early in the day, but then everything would thaw out and be just messy and wet.  Yeah.  Right.  Instead, we got ice, and lots and lots of it.  By the time I woke up on Thursday morning, the power had been out for several hours, and the temperature in the house was beginning to drop.

Icy trees and cables

By the middle of the day, you could stand outside and hear a constant cracking, popping, thumping sound from the woods all the way around, as one tree after another lost its battle with the thickening ice.  It was eerie, really.  One of the trees in my backyard fell, one trunk at a time, about making jump out of my skin each time.  That was loud!  Fortunately the dog was in the house when it fell, and it didn't take anything out with it.  Some houses and yards weren't so lucky.

What a mess!

Between all the fallen trees and the heavy ice hanging on cables themselves, it's no wonder there were so many outages...

I played mandolin quite a bit on Thursday, before the house cooled down to the point where it was too cold to play much.  Wrote this tune, which remains untitled, more or less...or maybe I'll leave the temporary title in place in memory of this week:

Iced In

Power remained out until last night, and it got down into the low forties in the house and stayed there.  Cold enough to see your breath.  I hung out with neighbors on Friday, though slept here--with a sleeping bag and a bunch of blankets, it was OK, except I kept dreaming of power trucks coming and fixing the lines.  And yesterday, I was *finally* able to get my car out of the snow and ice and out of the drive.  The wreckage out there is humbling: trees down everywhere, and you can imagine just how many were over the roads before work started.  I spent much of yesterday hanging out at coffee houses and grocery stores, reading and just savoring warmth.  My Kindle really helped keep me sane in all this, I gotta say.

But it was soooooo awesome to get home last night and finally find the power on.  Hot showers, real coffee, the ability to do *laundry*!  I missed them so much!

The wind is really picking up out there as another smaller storm comes through.  Crossing my fingers that it won't be enough to break things all over again...

Couple more ice pictures, just because...