Carmen is getting high off her catnip butterfly I bought for her at the beach.  Lily is testing the specific gravity of every item that lies in her path.

Moxley is (as usual) actively chastising both felines for their behaviour.  (I love him to death, but he is a bit of a narc.)

So, in short, it’s a 110% normal night here.

But hey, we’ve got working flashlights,  3 1/2 days of water, beef jerky & snack pack puddings – so I think we’ll be OK.

I was sitting at my computer wasting time and trying to un-engage my brain and I heard *something* coming and I wasn’t even sure what it was other than the fact that I knew it would greatly upset the dog lounging out on the deck and I had to get him inside immediately.  I dashed to the back door and said, “Moxley, get your ass in RIGHT NOW!!”  (It had a sound of very severe thunder and I’d rather him inside than digging a 4 foot deep hole to take cover in outside.)  He happily complied and I went dashing to the deck to see what was up.**

I viewed what for all intents and purposes appeared to be a fighter jet in afterburner leaving the neighborhood, but sounding much more like an airplane about to lose an engine.  TO THE INTERNET!  Facebook & Twitter yielded no immediate answers other than one person on my friend list who had heard/seen the same incident and had the same questions I had.  (I am still quite surprised that there was only the two of us in the neighborhood that took to the internet to figure out what on earth was going on.)

OK, time to mine the Twitter contacts for who may be In The Know.  Well, as it happened, Nathan Hager of WTOP News (@nhagerwtop) had made a post on his account a few minutes before this Very Loud Incident above my home, so I figured he might still be up and perhaps he’d seen/heard something – and shot him a tweet.  Within minutes I had my answer of “Norad training” – and as soon as I saw Norad, I remembered seeing a blurb about a training exercise that had been postponed due to weather.  (Sadly, it didn’t stick in my head until I was reminded of it.)

So, on the Twitter side of this posting – I can’t help but give some big props to Nathan (my personal local news guru) Hager for a) paying attention to his Twitter account, even on what had to be his verge of going to bed, and b) taking the time to post a response.  It was just great to get an answer so soon.  (Really, if you’re not following @nhagerwtop, you should be!

On the “weird after-effects” side – I went to bed and damned if I didn’t have weird airplane crashing and/or end of the world dreams for the rest of the night.  I woke up at 0430 and after realizing I still had 2 hours of sleep available to me, yelled at my brain that it was just all a bunch of weird dreams and everything was OK, and that the dog, the cats, and my brother were all in and I didn’t need to worry about any of it.  Didn’t help as the weird dreams continued, but seriously, BRAIN, LET ME SLEEP.

The last time I had a couple of fighter jets go over my house in afterburner was when I lived over in Burke.  I wallked out to the porch, looked up and thought, “Cool.”  It wasn’t for a few minutes before I thought, “Wait, what??”  I can only attribute the difference in reaction to now having a dog & brother under the same roof.  (Had cats both times and all were inside anyway.)

Really, I have enough on my mind without my brain deciding to create new and non-existent disasters for me to worry on.  Really brain, chill out.

*I have forever referred to it as “on afterburner” but my Godfather (for lack of a better description) let me know it is “in” rather than “on” – WTF do I know, my Dad was on E-2’s – they don’t even have afterburners in the first place, and if you see one “on” or “in afterburner” it means an engine is on fire.

**Not sure how going outside to see WTF was happening bodes for me in the event that the Zombie Apocalypse occurs.  I may be the first one off the map.

Saw an short article today saying that Dominion says they could have done better with communication.

Our power went out at 8:45 Wednesday evening.  I immediately reported the outage online and the initial reply was that they were still in assessment mode and couldn’t give a restoration estimate.  Perfectly understandable, given that they had 200,000 customers without power.  I opted for a callback at anytime with an update.  At about 4AM I got an automated call saying the restoration window would be Noon to 6PM on Thursday.  When I got up on Thursday, I checked online and saw that it had been updated to 7AM to 1PM.  (I missed the second update call.)

At 12:20, our power came back on.

I felt that they did fine with communication in my situation.  When they restoration window was established, they called me.  When it changed, they called me.  (Even though I missed it.)  I was able to look online and see those estimates as well.

I’m really not sure they could have done anything else to communicate better with me.

School was cancelled for tomorrow at 7:30 PM.

It has taken one of my friends a good 5 hours to get home.

The power just went out a few minutes ago – there are now 107K people without power in the county.  I doubt we’ll have it back anytime soon given that the transformers over the hill have been exploding.

We have a tree down in the backyard – of course, it went into our neighbor’s yard.  Fortunately, thanks to it being a rather light and bendy tree (despite it’s overall size) it is resting gently on the fence.  I do not own a chainsaw.  There is another tree leaning a bit – we knocked off as much snow as we could, but I’m guessing it’s going to go over as well.  That one is at least facing the yard.  And the house…

I can’t say I remember a snowstorm that did this much damage this quickly.  Thunderstorms, yes, but not snowstorms.  And it’s supposed to keep snowing until midnight.  Yay.

Now, while I’m sure some of the kids are happy they have the day totally free to do whatever they want because they did their homework last night, I’m quite certain there is a large segment of the student population thinking, “WHY did I bother with my homework last night???  The adults didn’t know ANYTHING.”

This is why Jack Weinberg said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

During the break in the weather this afternoon, I headed up to the market.  We need milk.  Not because it is snowing, but because we are out of milk as of today – I would have been hitting the store no matter what.  However, it would seem that a LOT of people in the neighborhood had the exact same idea of taking advantage of the weather pause.

Now, when I am at the store and I know we’ve got snow coming, I find I can’t just get the one or two things that are on my list.  All semblance of good nutrition and meal planning go completely out the window.  I suddenly want things absolutely crammed with fat, calories, carbohydrates and any other thing that is particularly unhealthy.  It’s like I’m bit possessed as I roam the aisles.  Fixings for cheese dip!  More stock for cheese grits!  Mexican cheese for tacos for dinner!  Decent tortillas!!  (Why I bought Piñata tortillas the last time I was out is beyond me.)  Kielbasa!  Potatoes!  Cinnamon bread for French toast!  Taquitos!  Mini chocolate frosted donuts!  (Those just appeared in my cart.  I don’t know how they got there.  Some 3 year old must have tossed them in and run away.)

Knowing that this nutritional debacle was looming ahead for the next 24 hours, I did at least have a salad for lunch.

In other snow related thoughts, I have found that in my role as substitute teacher, I am happy to defend snow days.  Yes, I do like the bonus day off – I am human after all.  Yes, I know it totally screws up things for parents, especially with so many families with both parents working.  However, I am fairly certain that on days like this, the Superintendent doesn’t get up at 4AM and dial VDOT for road conditions thinking, “Let’s see how many people I can completely and utterly inconvenience today!”

There are employees that are already en route to work by 5AM, so they’ve got to make the call by 4:30.  If the roads are crap, they can push it back 2 hours if they really think things will improve, but if it’s still crap at 6:30 – the day is done.  Lots of teens drive themselves to work.  Do you enjoy being on the road with 17 years olds on a GOOD day, much less in sleet?  I didn’t think so. :)

I was up at 6:30 this morning – still too much sleet to be safe at that point, and I’m sure it was much worse out in the western part of the county.  We had some rain in the middle of the day today, but it’s just now turned to a snow/sleet mix again – right when the buses would be back on the roads trying to get the elementary school kids home.  I think the closing was a good call today.

HR 4872 may or may not happen today, aka health care. This should be interesting. I just hope that perhaps this can stop some of the nastiness going about. (Last I heard, Gerry Connolly was on board, deem and pass had gone out the window, and the fence-sitters were finding themselves in quite the spotlight.)

In other news, I am an Avon rep!! (Been dying to try the Anew line, didn’t know a rep and decided I would just be my own rep.) Thank you Melissa for being my awesome first customer! To that end, I have a meeting with my District Sales Manager tomorrow, a “Division Rally” next week and a sales meeting the week after that. Basically, more meetings in the next 3 weeks than I’ve been to in the last 4 years. At the risk of sounding like a sales pitch, I will say the online ordering and direct delivery they have now is pretty spiffy.

Now I am going to figure out what I am going to do with the rest of this absolutely gorgeous day. Well, after lunch.

Then I was awakened at 7:45 this morning by my NOAA radio kindly letting me know that we’re all going to die.  I am trying to find an animated loop of the regional radar over the past 6 hours to see when & where this second storm cell developed when there was nothing there 5 hours earlier.

I should have stuck with my instincts and just not gone to bed.  I’m serious – I was really toying with the idea.  (Too much snow + too much caffeine = ideas of staying up all night to beat Mother Nature.)  This is what the snow has done to me.  I had been keeping up with the snow on Friday night until I went to bed.  Last night, the driveway, sidewalk and car were cleared off.  And then I went to bed.  And it all went to hell.  IF I’D JUST STAYED UP ALL NIGHT THIS WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED.

Part of me thinks that I should get out there and at least take a few whacks at it.  The intelligent part of my brain says not to set a toe outside until I see my neighbors out there or the wind dies down a bit.  My sweet southern neighbor brought home a brand new snowblower yesterday and while I would never in a million years expect or even ask for help unless I desperately needed it, maybe I’ll get lucky we’ll be out at the same time and he’ll want to do more snowblowing.  :)

There must be a 6 hour radar loop somewhere that I can look at if no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity.

Moxley, Mr. “I love the wind!” went out and then wouldn’t come back in.  WTF dog?!  So, I get dressed, shoes on and take 2 steps out the back door and he trundles right in.  I think it was his way of saying, “If I have to go to the bathroom in this nonsense, you have to get out of your PJ’s.”

*This was the same neighbor who was positively ecstatic when I was house/dogsitting and the tree fell in the driveway.  Before I could even figure out who to call or what to do, he was out there with the chain saw and a huge smile on his face.

I really don’t understand how folks that live in places like Buffalo and have this much snow on the ground most of the winter don’t just lose their minds.  I realize it must just be something you get used to after you’ve lived there a while, but I guess I can say I understand how someone might feel the first year they lived there.  (And of course, they do have the experience and equipment to deal with this type of snow in short order.)

I don’t think it’s cabin fever – I can hermit up with the best of them.  But something about this is making me a little nuts.  Maybe it’s the feeling that I have no idea whatsoever what I really should be worrying about, and the knowledge that whatever it is, there probably isn’t anything I can do about it anyway.  Case in point:  Didn’t occur to me until halfway through the storm that I could stop worrying about clearing the outside compressor as this house doesn’t have a heat pump.  (In my defense, I spent over 10 years in a house with a heat pump.  Old habits die hard I guess.)

I did run up to the post office today*.  Conditions I drove on/saw were: clear/dry, slushy, unplowed, plowed but not much, wet, and covered in water and near flooding.  Anything that’s not dry by now is going to be a sheet of ice tonight.

Now that we’ve got another 10-20 on the way, it’s time to go with the “be postive” approach…

– The driveway and sidewalks are clear, and even without the snowblower help I could have (and would have) gotten them cleared on my own.
– I’ve dug halfway to the mailbox.  (Considering the berm is over 4 feet high and somewhere between 5-6 feet deep, I’m OK with that measure of progress.)
– I have the physical ability to keep up with the snow when the next round comes.
– I don’t have to be anywhere.
– I have more than enough food, as do the pets.
– I have Coke, Milk, Beer, Wine, Liquor, Champagne and Orange Juice.
– I have power.
– I got through the first storm on my own and I can certainly hack this one if little bro doesn’t come back before it starts.
– I have good neighbors and friends who I can ask for help if I need it.

So, it’s not quite the end of the world.  Still can’t guarantee that I won’t pull a full on nutter before it’s all over, but I’m trying to be positive and consider this an excellent character building experience.  Or at least a story I can torture younguns with in 30 years.

*Car behaved nicely.  I’ll be sticking with short daylight drives until such time as I can get it to the shop with my favorite car problem: the intermittent kind.