Valentine's Day weekend

This evening, my girlfriend and I flew back in from Michigan, where we had a fun time celebrating Valentine's Day weekend away from the DC sprawl. It was a little unusual that Ann Arbor had a lot less snow on the ground than DC. The weekend included lots of wonderful food, including dinner at Palio on Saturday, lunch at the Blue Tractor on Sunday, and some homemade baking of chocolate cream puffs. After this weekend, I feel like I need to spend the entire week at the gym.


Florentine Chocolate Profiteroles

After four days off from work last week due to snow, and the President's Day holiday today, it is going to be a little hard getting back into the work mode tomorrow.

There is snow place like home

Earlier today, the blizzard in DC created a complete white-out. Between the falling snow and the 45 mph wind gusts, it was definitely the day to stay inside and stay warm. This afternoon, when the winds died down a little bit, I ventured outside to shovel the sidewalks. The wind has been creating huge snow drifts, but it looks like it will be fairly manageable to dig out on Thursday. Unfortunately, most of the snow removal equipment has been sidelined due to the white-out conditions, so it is unclear how well the main streets will be plowed tomorrow.



I will be happy to have a break from the snow. The muscles in my back have been getting increasingly sore, especially since as the piles of snow get higher, I have to lift the snow more.

What a plowed road in Arlington looks like...

It looks like Arlington County may have finally plowed our street, or at least some approximation thereof. The center pile of snow between the tire tracks is down to about six inches in height, so it is likely that a truck with a blade drove through the neighborhood.

One scoop of snow at a time

Arlington County still has not gotten around to plowing the street I live on. This was as expected, because while Arlington County is great at mailing lots of pamphlets promoting recycling (which I always find ironic), telling people to not drive and use mass transit instead, or wasting money on other frivolous causes, core government services has never been its forte. So a few of us in the neighborhood shoveled out a narrow path down our street. It was a lot of work, but we can now get our cars out into the real world.

In the absence of effective government, people can organize together to take care of themselves. And if the government is unable to provide reasonable common services, it will make people stop and wonder what their excessive taxes are being used for. Hopefully this event will influence people to vote for candidates that will promote the government getting back to basics.

Of course, they are predicting another snowstorm for the area that could drop another foot or two of snow on the area. So I expect that I will again be shoveling the street, one scoop of snow at a time.

The end of the world! Or not

The Washington DC area received a respectable amount of snow today, with accumulations ranging from 16-30" of snow. While the storm disappointed expectations that it would be the worst storm in DC history (there were some predictions of 40" of snow), the people in DC are still treating it like it was the end of the world. As usual, people made a run on the grocery stores towards the end of the week, clearing the stores of milk, eggs, and produce. I stopped by one of the local Safeway stores on Friday to pick up some supplies to make chili, and was entertained that almost all of the produce was sold out.



The Arlington area received about two feet of snow, and it is probably going to be several days before Arlington County gets to plowing the area. According to the Arlington snow plowing map, the street I live on is on the lowest priority tier for plowing. Based on past experience, that means that it probably won't be plowed at all. So whether I can get out of my neighborhood will depend on how well the neighborhood works together to clear the snow out of the road. It is such a difference from being back home in Michigan, where my street would have been already plowed four or five times by now.