Winter Wonderland
Dec. 27th, 2004 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dxmachinaIt is very pretty outside my office. There is fluffy white snow on the ground, and the sun is shining. It just all so sparkly. Mind, I wasn't thinking the snow was so great last night as I was driving through the storm.
The holiday is over, and I managed to enjoy most of it, which was definitely a question going in. Turns out it's very hard to be glum when you get to hold a cutie patootie niece.
I got an assortment of loot in addition to the electic leg o'sex, including a teensy FlatFoto digital camera. It's not a great camera (maximum res is one megapixel, the lens is tiny, and there's no way to view the photos until you download them), but it's only 3/8" thick and the length and width of a credit card, so it's very handy to carry. The picture of the niece above was taken with it, as was this picture of one of the places my brothers and I used to play.
Yesterday I went down to see Alex. We got a few light flurries mid-afternoon, so we did an early dinner so I could get on the road before the real heavy stuff started coming down. The best laid plans...
It wasn't snowing at all when I took off around 6. It was at this point that I made my big mistake. There are two ways I can get to the Tappan Zee from Al's, either by the Garden State Parkway, or by the Jersey Turnpike to the Palisades Parkway. The Parkway is easier and somewhat less trafficked, but the Turnpike route is a little shorter, and since it was Sunday evening, I didn't expect any problems going that way. Oops. I hadn't realized that the Jets-Patriots game at the Meadowlands would be finishing up around 7, or just as I would be passing by the stadium. It took close to an hour to get through that traffic jam. By the time I got to Connecticut, the snow had begun in earnest. It was bad enough it was snowing, but there was also an extraordinary amount of traffic on the road for a Sunday night, probably everyone doing the same as I, going home.
I don't mind driving in the snow. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but it doesn't especially scare me. What I hate is driving in the snow surrounded by other folks who may or may not know how to drive in the snow. The road was slippery, but not overly so. Still, I passed eight separate accidents on my drive through Connecticut. (One of them was a Corvette who had clearly entered an exit ramp too fast. He had skidded off the ramp and down a hill into a gully next to the highway. A trooper was standing up at the top of the hill just looking down, probably trying to figure out the best way to extricate the thing.) The traffic thinned out a lot once I passed New Haven, except for a few large clumps of cars here and there. (It's amazing how much havok a single driver can wreak upon a traffic pattern.) The main problem by that point was that the snow was beginning to pile up. Around Madison I managed to get on the tail of a Stop & Shop truck that seemed to know what he was doing, and I basically followed him all the way to Rhode Island. Normally I hate being behind a big truck, but it turns out that clueless drivers who won't get out of the way for little ol' me will get out of the way of a big ol' semi, and I really didn't have to follow all that closely to get the benefit. I finally got home just before midnight.
Today I am at work, but after 5:00, I am off for the rest of the year. Woo!
The holiday is over, and I managed to enjoy most of it, which was definitely a question going in. Turns out it's very hard to be glum when you get to hold a cutie patootie niece.
| Cutie Patootie Niece |
 |
I got an assortment of loot in addition to the electic leg o'sex, including a teensy FlatFoto digital camera. It's not a great camera (maximum res is one megapixel, the lens is tiny, and there's no way to view the photos until you download them), but it's only 3/8" thick and the length and width of a credit card, so it's very handy to carry. The picture of the niece above was taken with it, as was this picture of one of the places my brothers and I used to play.
Yesterday I went down to see Alex. We got a few light flurries mid-afternoon, so we did an early dinner so I could get on the road before the real heavy stuff started coming down. The best laid plans...
It wasn't snowing at all when I took off around 6. It was at this point that I made my big mistake. There are two ways I can get to the Tappan Zee from Al's, either by the Garden State Parkway, or by the Jersey Turnpike to the Palisades Parkway. The Parkway is easier and somewhat less trafficked, but the Turnpike route is a little shorter, and since it was Sunday evening, I didn't expect any problems going that way. Oops. I hadn't realized that the Jets-Patriots game at the Meadowlands would be finishing up around 7, or just as I would be passing by the stadium. It took close to an hour to get through that traffic jam. By the time I got to Connecticut, the snow had begun in earnest. It was bad enough it was snowing, but there was also an extraordinary amount of traffic on the road for a Sunday night, probably everyone doing the same as I, going home.
I don't mind driving in the snow. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but it doesn't especially scare me. What I hate is driving in the snow surrounded by other folks who may or may not know how to drive in the snow. The road was slippery, but not overly so. Still, I passed eight separate accidents on my drive through Connecticut. (One of them was a Corvette who had clearly entered an exit ramp too fast. He had skidded off the ramp and down a hill into a gully next to the highway. A trooper was standing up at the top of the hill just looking down, probably trying to figure out the best way to extricate the thing.) The traffic thinned out a lot once I passed New Haven, except for a few large clumps of cars here and there. (It's amazing how much havok a single driver can wreak upon a traffic pattern.) The main problem by that point was that the snow was beginning to pile up. Around Madison I managed to get on the tail of a Stop & Shop truck that seemed to know what he was doing, and I basically followed him all the way to Rhode Island. Normally I hate being behind a big truck, but it turns out that clueless drivers who won't get out of the way for little ol' me will get out of the way of a big ol' semi, and I really didn't have to follow all that closely to get the benefit. I finally got home just before midnight.
Today I am at work, but after 5:00, I am off for the rest of the year. Woo!
