The Great Ice Storm of 2005!

Well, it's winter. I can tell, because there's an ice storm going on around me. There are more than 205,000 people and businesses in Greenville without power right now...obviously not us, otherwise I wouldn't be able to update y'all! The precipitation does seem to be tapering off a bit, but what scares me is this: it's been raining non-stop since about midnight last night. It has hovered right around 32 degrees today....NOAA is saying that the low tonight will be around 28. Which means that any water on the roads will freeze. See, today, the roads weren't the problem. They were wet & messy, but other than that--no biggie. The only problems you had today were the downed tree limbs, power lines & transformers, and all the idiots who don't know (or don't care) that when the lights are out, you treat the intersection as a four-way stop. But tomorrow morning...if there's ice on the roads, that'll make for some fun driving! Don't worry--we're at the bottom of a hill, so if I can't get out of the apartments, I'm certainly not going to be able to drive into work! (At least until it melts a bit...)

Our Firm did close at 3:30 today, and I was pretty busy this morning (my attorney worked from home, but had her Blackberry, so she was keeping me plenty busy), so I sort of worked through lunch...they let us know at 12:30 (normal lunch time) that they were going to order pizza for us, that it would be there around 1:30. Great! So, I just kept working, and when the pizza arrived, I just ate it while I continued to work. So, effectively working through my hour lunch, I was able to leave at 2:30--but will get paid for the whole day. Not bad, eh?

On another note, I have been feeling a little less tired; on Tuesday I had a burst of energy: I came home, fed the cats, did 3 loads of laundry, put up the dishes, wrapped some presents, made some crafty things...I was so happy to be doing stuff, rather than just laying slug-like on the sofa. I felt pretty good last night, too, and went out to the store, did some Santa stuff, mailed packages & Christmas cards... Of course I was excited about the prospect of not going to work today (which, as it turns out I did have to go to work today) and lifted by my full-of-energy-ness, I went to bed too late (11pm!), so am a bit more tired today.... Because of the Ice Storm of 2005 (they're not calling it that, I'm just going on past experience, and figure that they'll begin using their Armageddon-sized print and begin using that moniker, and I'm just beating them to the punch. Whoever "they" are.), Charter is not broadcasting any shows right now. Lucky for me, I've got the rest of "Criminal Minds" and another "Waking the Dead" that I need to watch. I'm sure there's a show about flipping houses to sell then people come in and design them that I've taped, too, and just don't know it yet.

Here are some pictures that I took from our back porch (yeah, like we have a front porch....) of some of the trees with ice on them.


I took a close-up from this one to give you a view of the tree that's in the middle:

And no, the tree wasn't like that before the Ice Storm of 2005....

I talked to Mom & Dad when I got home, and they said that Greenville Online (http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage) has some good pictures of the havoc this storm has wreaked (wrecked?). Once you're at greenvilleonline.com, on the right side of the page (you may need to scroll down a bit) in the "Related" box, there's a "Photo Galleries" listing. Click on "Winter Storm." There's a really impressive photo of a tree down on Coffee Street--that's just a few blocks down from where I work.