Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Ice

Even though Kansas is in a State of Emergency, we're fine here.

Right now, the temperature isn't low enough for the rain to freeze on the streets, but that's not to say that it won't drop later. Right now it's just rain.

With all the dire predictions yesterday -- and obviously a lot of other parts of the Midwest got it much worse than we did -- around 4:00 I started thinking about what things I could take home in case I couldn't get to work today. Bob got off at 5:00 and called and asked when I was leaving work, and I said I would leave soon, but I needed to finish up a few things.

He called again a little before 6:00 and said, "You've got to get out of there! The storm is 15 minutes from Olathe!" I expected him to say, "We're all gonna DIIIIIIIIIIE!"

But he didn't. I shut the computer down, poured out the last of my glass of water, got my coat, went out and told Jeff that Bob said we needed to leave NOW, and started turning off lights. Bob called again about five minutes later, and I opened up the phone and said, "I'm turning off the lights!"

I do appreciate him looking after me, though, of course. Jeff and I left (and I was glad to have him with me), and I called Bob from the car to tell him I was on the way home. It wasn't bad, neither the weather nor the traffic. It was a little bit slow, but not bad at all, really.

Bob was worried about the trees, worried about branches breaking and hitting the house, which I hadn't even thought of, so of course I started worrying about that, too. He reminded me of the last ice storm we had, when the wind was high and branches kept hitting the windows, and he made me sleep in the basement in case one came through the bedroom window.

I woke up several times in the night, and it seemed to pretty much rain all night.l This morning, there was nice on the trees, but I think the ground must have been too warm for it to really form on the streets. The parking lot at work was slick, but the roads were fine. I'm not sure what's going to happen tonight. If the temperature drops a lot we could definitely have an ice rink to drive on, but for now, it seems like we may have lucked out.

Bob said he turned the heat way up last night to get the house warm in case we lost power, I guess thinking that it would stay warmer longer. I wouldn't have thought of that, I thought that was a really good idea. People at work said they lost power briefly overnight, but that it came back on. I don't think we ever lost it. Hopefully we won't.

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