Snow Shuts Houston Down

Seriously. We had over a 1,000 car accidents between Thursday and Friday night, and I thought I heard there were ten fatalities as a result. It was crazy. I mean, I know 22 degrees is cold-but it's not THAT cold. The mayor of Houston told everyone to stay home Friday, and every school closed because we MIGHT have had snow. Now, I will say that most people here aren't used to driving on a thin sheet of ice. But, we have torrential downpours fairly often that cause cars to hydroplane across the highway. How do you cope with the rain? You drive slower. Is there ice on the road? Same thing. Don't drive on it at 70mph, moron. You can still spin out at 30mph-but the damage will be a whole heck of a lot less. I think a huge part of the problem was people speeding out of control. Anyway, I was just incredibly amused at the amount of people who were freaking out because of the cold, keeping their children inside as if it were death out there. All I could think of were the kids in Idaho who go to school until it's -30, and only then will they close school. And here we are, panicking and killing ourselves over a pretend snow storm. I used to have to drive 35 miles to work on black ice and through blizzards so bad I could only go about 10mph. The road Jeff and I lived on always had about 5 inches of ice, you just had to stay in the ruts, and break about a mile from our complex so by the time you got to the entrance you could turn in. If you waited too long, and didn't break early enough, you'd just slide right past it and have to turn around. It was great fun.

Our apartment complex maintenance went into over-drive, and the poor guys didn't really understand what it meant to salt the stairs. I woke up to rock salt all over the stairwell Friday morning. I think it was more dangerous than the thin coat of ice-since I almost tripped on the round little rocks a few times. It gave me a good laugh though to see them use rock salt. That, and I really did appreciate that they were out there by 7am, making sure all the stairs were salted for us. But Fortunately, everyone I know survived the our chilly temperatures and stayed warm and safe. Including Chunky. Thursday and Friday were a little cold for him, but Saturday warmed up enough we didn't need jackets and he could enjoy some good old vitamin D by the window. Hope everyone out West and in the Midwest survived alright :) ... and, for your viewing pleasure, a VERY accurate weather report ... hahahaha