Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Holy Arctic Circle, Batman!

In St. Louis we have a saying:
"If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes."

This has certainly been the case lately. Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous days. We had a high of 75 (that's seventy-five, people... in early March!) on Sunday, the sun was shining, there was a bit of a breeze... it felt like spring. Everybody in St. Louis was wearing shorts and cooking steaks on the grill!

And then Monday came. Temperatures fell like a rock, and by mid afternoon, it looked like this:

Okay, that would be sleet. Big pieces of sting-when-they-hit-you-while-you-are-waddling-as-fast-as-you-can-across-the-grocery-store-parking-lot-sleet.

This morning, we awoke to this: That would be snow. Lots of fluffy powder, blowing around like crazy. It started around 7am. We now have this:
That would be 8-10 inches of soft, fluffy powder... and it's about 3pm. Although it's supposed to stop sometime in the next hour, it's still coming down like crazy. We even had thundersnow this morning!!!

The other thing we here at Chez KeowdieKnits had this morning was a doctor's appointment. I got the very fun cervical exam wherein we discovered that, although Sweet Pea is still high, I am currently about 1.5 cm dilated. This gives me hope, since we are at 36 weeks, and with Tyson I was still closed and locked up tight at 38 weeks. So, some progress is being made... but not so much progress that I am panicking (too much) about getting everything ready.

I grabbed the camera as we ventured out of the house, into the arctic wonderland that is St. Louis. Here are some of the highlights:

Um... I'm pretty sure there's a road there that keeps going... you just can't see it for all the snow. Look up on the overpass... see those vans & trucks? Those are all the news vans lined up, getting video of the major highway we are driving on. They are undoubtedly hoping to get some poor schmuck on video spinning out of control. (I think that's what they call the "money shot.")
Oops! Here would be that poor schmuck who spun out on the highway. This is actually a different highway, but he is in the grassy median.. facing the wrong way. Poor guy.
Lanes? What lanes? We don't need no stinking lanes!!! This is highway 270... for those who do not live here, this is the major artery for the St. Louis Metro area. Seriously... this highway runs through the entire county, and around the entire city. It is actually possible to go north, south, east, and west on this one road. I promise... there is a road there.... under all the snow. There are four lanes gong in each direction... when you can find the lines to be in a lane. We couldn't actually find them (and apparently neither could anyone else) so Matt just did the best he could to stay in in line behind the guy in front of us.
So, what does a family do on a very snowy day?

Well, after I did some actual work, I did a little of this:

(That's Elefante's tummy in progress...)

Tyson did a little of this:
And Matt did quite a bit of this:
Isn't he such a dedicated worker? Dialing in & spending the entire afternoon working from home...

Enos frolicked for a bit in the snow...
And Roscoe tried for a long time to find the milk bone that he lost in the snow on the deck (while trying to shake the offensive snow from his treat). He's been out twice since this photo was taken, and he still hasn't found it. (Part beagle, my ass...)
That's about it for now. Just snow, snow and more snow. I'm sure we'll have to go back to work and school tomorrow, but for now we're just going to enjoy the day off.

1 comment:

it's a secret. shhh. said...

You are extremely brave for venturing out on i-270 during the snowstorm. But, it was soooo beautiful to watch coming down (except for the thundersleet).