Day 2

Here are some photos of the aftermath of our little blizzard. Brace yourselves....there's a lot of snow.

This is what we saw after we forced our door open early this morning:

The front of our apartment. For dramatic effect, see here for the summertime contrast.

Looking out to the parking lot.

The front porch. That snow is about waist deep on us.

Until about 9:00 this morning we didn't own a snow shovel. There was no need for us to own one because our apartment complex management took care of snow removal. Unfortunately, their snow blowers can only do so much in snow this deep, and they also don't dig out parked cars. The university officially closed for the day, canceling all classes and shutting down all unnecessary offices. So, with a little time on our hands, and a dire need to become owners of a snow shovel we walked to a nearby shopping center to buy one.

This field was much more serene-looking before we had to trudge through it.

Here I am, bundled up and happy to have made it to the road.

And here are Blake's frozen solid blue jeans. Seriously...they were hard as rock. Don't let that sun fool you...it's bitterly cold outside today. I think we're expected to reach a high of 11 degrees with wind chills around -10.

Here's another road. So far, in the places we've seen, they've only been able to plow one lane's worth of road. It's better than nothing, though.

Once we got home, we set about to dig out our car. Because if we didn't, it would be going absolutely nowhere pretty fast:

Yikes. It was completely buried.

It took a while to finally free the car. But I'm glad we did it when we did because otherwise the snow would have frozen and then we'd be in trouble.

All told, we received, I heard (and judged by our sidewalk) about 18 inches of actual snow and snow drifts up to 6 feet high. Now we're just celebrating the fact that we can in fact get out of our house by staying inside where it's warm. But I have to say... it's kind of fun to have been able to experience a real Midwestern blizzard during our time living out here. It's been absolutely fascinating to watch and definitely something to marvel at. This doesn't mean, however, that I'm crossing my fingers for another one any time soon. One's enough. Especially if we're going to get that "early Spring" the groundhog predicted.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!