Fire & Ice (or Snow, rather)

It snowed yesterday.

I realize that it snows frequently in The Frontier, even more so than usual this year (Global Warming, what?!), but yesterday's snowstorm was significant because we had been without snow for a whole week.

Not only had we been without snow, but it had been in the 50s (of course I was in DC for most of it) for several days, meaning that the snow on our driveway had completely melted for the first time in two months. (There was still a good 4" on the front lawn). No longer. There is now a good 8-10" on our front lawn, and the driveway has two deep tire tracks, as no one got up early enough this morning to actually shovel anything.

Making matters more interesting, the snowstorm hit its hardest during rush hour, always a great way to spend the entirety of one's evening - watching the snow from inside one's toasty warm car, cross-eyed from focusing so intently on the rear lights of the car in front of you, creeping along the bench at -5 mph.

The only relief is that it isn't supposed to snow again (according to the only-sometimes-correct weatherman) for another week. Maybe. Toes and fingers crossed.

So yesterday ended bad; today started out bad. Car was buried. Driveway was buried. Driveway into the sitter's complex nearly bested my poor, non-snow worthy car.

It continued along that course.

Our building caught on fire. One of the suites in The Factory's building had some sort of fire (albeit small) that disrupted the entire building's productivity for 30 minutes while the fireman fixed the fire and another 30 minutes while they scurried around trying to figure out why the alarm was still going off.

An hour later, everyone settled into their comfortable (and only semi-productive at this point) routines, the power went off - on the entire block.

We work on laptops - battery power lasts for several hours - unfortunately, the server which we connect to (owned and operated by the company with whom we office share) does not. I, having possession of the evil Blackberry, was the only one with internet/e-mail access.

It was off for an hour.

Seriously. I haven't even waded through the 100 e-mails I received overnight. Am I going to accomplish anything?