Okay, so, we had snow. From 4:00 a.m. Wednesday morning (12/20) until very late Thursday evening (12/21). We had snow and we had wind and we had poor visibility and we had a lot of crazy people getting stuck all over the city. (On our little side road alone, there were at least nine cars abandoned by Thursday afternoon.)

Context is tricky with snow pictures. I have a few of the massive drifts of snow, but unless you can get something next to them to show scale, they don't look that impressive. Since the cars were all buried, that means that if the R.C. or I couldn't wade through to the middle of the drifts, all you see is a sea of white.

Like this one. If you don't know that that sea of white down in the parking lot, just above the red ribbon, is actually a row of seven cars, it just looks like snow on the balcony. But there are seven cars buried there.

Walking is fun in two feet of snow. You feel quite like an arctic explorer, wading thigh-deep through soft drifts of white, never quite sure what you're going to put your foot down on.

Here, I'd just given up on trying to find pavement and I was going "cross-country" under the trees, but since my boots only6 went halfway up my calves, that didn't turn out to be very smart.

It wasn't hard to find piles of plowed snow six or seven feet high. (I'm standing on five or six inches of packed snow, there.)

I didn't manage to take any that really showed just how deep some of the unplowed drifts were, but this one comes close.

The R.C. (in a coat that's far too big for her, but leaves room for three sweaters underneath) shows us the latest in automobile fashion, a sixteen-inch cap of snow.

The first time we actually made it out of our parking lot was Saturday afternoon, when we took our courage, and our lives, in our hands and walked over to the drugstore.

There are seven exits from our apartment complex parking lots, not one of which was really passable, so we just took the one nearest our building. The sidewalks were invisible, so we (and a couple of other hardy pedestrians) had to share a narrow lane in the middle of the unplowed road with the cars.

There was no chance of getting to the "walk" signal button, so once we got to the intersection, we waited for a green light, then infuriated the waiting cars by scampering with great care across the snow-packed roads to the even more snow-packed mall parking lot and down to the next light where someone had thankfully beaten a path to the "walk" signal button.

During which time, I should mention, we stood and watched one totally moronic driver who, with plenty of room to spare, insisted on tailgating an oblivious, head-phoned pedestrian. By the time the pedestrian noticed the car, it was squeezing past him with a bare couple of inches to spare.

I never did figure that one out. There were four feet of empty pavement on the other side of the car the driver didn't seem to want to drive on. It was a divided drive, so he was free to use the entire space but for some reason I'll never fathom, he felt that driving on the snow-packed verge, virtually aiming at the back of a pedestrian who clearly couldn't hear him coming, was a better choice.

The driver also, for the record, looked massively pissed off that someone who had their back turned to him and who was wearing headphones (a really stupid move on the part of the pedestrian, by the way), couldn’t hear a car rolling up behind him over the snow. The driver just kept rolling closer and closer to the guy, and looking more and more pissed off when the pedestrian continued to walk along.

Had the pedestrian heard the car, he wouldn't have had many options anyhow. The only place for him to try and go was over the four-foot mountain of snow to his left. While the driver, let me repeat, had four feet of empty pavement to the right that he was free to use.

People? Are insane.

After that, we had to thread our way through an icy and slushy parking lot filled with irate drivers angry that they weren't the only people in town who had thought of going to Whole Foods.

In retrospect, deciding to walk over to the store wasn't our brightest idea all weekend, but it was nice to get out.

We had a bit more snow Sunday evening, but just a skiff. Not worth noticing, except for the way it covered the dirty piles of plowed ice with a fresh, clean covering of pristine white. On Monday the sky was blue and the sun was shining, so we had a white Christmas and a beautiful day.

By all accounts, public transportation, which ground to a halt as buses bogged down all over town last Wednesday and Thursday, is almost back to normal. The bus drivers are trying, but not all roads have really been plowed (in spite of the city's claims) and even the plowed ones are sometimes only a single traffic lane wide, making it tough for buses to stop. Also, yesterday's sunshine resulted in a fair amount of melt-off so that roads that were clear yesterday were solidly iced-over by this morning.

Me, I drove to work today. Turns out that you can't take public transportation if there's so much snow you can't walk to the bus stop.

It turned into a gorgeous day, though. Sunny and warm, with a lovely, balmy feel to the air. And we have another one tomorrow, before the nexgt storm blows in. The weatherman can't decide if we're geting four inches or 16 inches.

It's an adventure!