okay, Winter Storm, we're waaaaiting.... OH! *Here* you are! in shiny things

SO. I got up this morning when my alarm went off, all bleary and tired because I went to bed too late last night because OOOHHH!!! BLIZZARD COMING!!!! ....and there wasn't a flake of snow to be seen. But I did have an email saying the university would be shutting down at noon today. I'd already told Baker B that I was going in to work if it wasn't snowing yet when I got up, but all the forecasts STILL said it would be starting at about 9. It didn't really make sense to me to go in and then have to turn right around and leave in an hour if that was the case. Because I WOULD be leaving when it started, since for once everyone was agreeing it was going to be a serious snow storm. I've already been though the waiting-too-late-to-evacuate-and-having-to-spend-the-night-in-a-motel thing. I've got tons of vacation time and I'm not "essential personnel".

SO Baker B and I both just wimped out and stayed home. And it didn't snow. And it didn't snow some more. It didn't start snowing at 9, or 10, or 11... well, at one point it flurried a bit, but then it quit again. It didn't start at 12, when the University shut down. (As a side note, the University NEVER used to shut down. They never even cancelled classes back when I was a student and dinosaurs roamed the earth. Now they cancel classes at the blink of an eye, and we've had two University Shutdowns already this semester. Those are nice, though, since if the whole university is shut down, non-essential personnel don't have to go in, and we get paid.)

Noon came and went as did pretty much the rest of the day, and we had maybe an inch of snow and were thinking, ummmm.... maybe we should have gone to work!! And maybe the University shouldn't have shut down at noon!

Apparently the storm had just dillydallied around, though, and it finally did start snowing at around 6:00 this evening. And it has been PELTING down. It's still pelting down. My front yard currently looks like this:

Well, currently as in a half hour or so ago. Now it's even deeper! This is blurry but you can see how it's piling up on the bird feeders. That's a Fake Bird at the top, incidentally. Baker B found it lying in the middle of a lonely rural back road on Beech Mountain, and thought it was real for a horrifying moment--- then discovered it was plastic. And brought it home. And we clipped it onto our bird feeder/plant holder thing. The mysterious blue square on the left is an inexplicable reflection from my computer screen which is nowhere near the door - we'd been watching Would I Lie To You by streaming it to the TV from YouTube and laughing like hyenas.

Oh, here's the snow plow going by just a few minutes ago! I don't know why the snow plow is bothering at this time of the night with the snow still pelting down, but whatever! And the Winter Lights reflecting cheerfully in the window.

Stay tuned to see where we are tomorrow .

** edit to say, just found out where we are tomorrow -- the university is closed all day! Yippie!!! No worries about having to get to work, and now I can sleep in tomorrow too. Now we've got THREE closings in a month. It may be the end of the world as we know it.