No Day But Today...

Alright, so we didn't get quite as much snow as this picture from yesterday's blog may have let on, but we did get about 10-12 centimeters (about another 4.5 inches). Plus, I live on the inside of a bay, near the outskirts of the city, and we're surrounded on two sides by fields, so my front and side yard looks more like it has two feet of snow sitting in it.  Pictures to follow in tomorrow's blog as I was too lazy to take any today and it's now too dark to see anything.

I got up this morning as planned at 6 am to check the listings of school closures etc and figure out whether I was going to try and make it to school, and whether or not my mom had to get to school (she's an educational assistant).  By 6:30, there was a list of 25 different closures throughout the city and the surrounding areas and it was being added to about every 10 minutes, including the main perimeter highways as well as multiple other highways in and out of the city.  Initially I was under the impression that I was still going to school.  However, after getting all ready and ensuring a ride from my mom on her way to work (because I was NOT waiting for the bus in 80 km winds)...we couldn't get out the door.  Our screen door was literally frozen to the frame. We both tried forcing it, which probably wasn't the best idea, tried warming the seams up with our hands, which also didn't work, then we got the brainy idea to try unfreezing it with the hairdryer.  So there we were, my mom and I, standing all bundled up, blow drying our door open.  Epically comical, I assure you.  I wish someone else had been awake to take a picture. We finally got it open, only to find about a foot and a half of snow directly on our doorstep.  I took the leap and managed to grab a couple shovels from the side of the house, at which point we got to work.  For some reason,  the back driveway was reasonably less snowed-in than the rest of our yard, probably because of the protection our vehicles provided.  However, there as a huge drift of snow behind the van.  And what did we do? We backed right out into it and got stuck.  My dad was up by the time we had shoveled ourselves a pathway to the van and said we should have no problem getting out. Thanks, dad.  Over the next half an hour, we managed to get stuck another two times trying to get out of the back lane and finally gave up and called it a day.

The rest of the day was spent gloriously curled up in bed with a purring cat, my bowl of coffee  on constant refill, my electric blanket on a cozy temperature, and 2 books I needed to read for school, both of which I finished.

All in all, not a bad day.  I heard from one of the brave who managed to make it to the university that out of the near 30 students we have in our cohort, only 14 made it to the morning classes, and of those, 10 stayed till our last class, which ended up being canceled when the prof saw our rousing turn out.  I now don't feel so badly about not trying harder to get to school.

Now then, this is not to say that we Canadians, much more, we Winnipeg-ers are wimps.  However, we know when conditions are unsafe, and we know enough not to be stupid.  Well except for that guy acting as a Toyota snowplow into the city with a line of 8 cars behind him...he had to stick his head out the window just to navigate because the snow was blowing so much he couldn't see otherwise.  All except for him.  So don't let this event tarnish our reputation of being the hardy sort who think that -15 is not at all cold and that at -45 we should maybe think about zipping up our parkas.  We may be strong-willed and bull-headed when it comes to our weather, but we're not stupid.  Most of us upon waking this morning couldn't see our neighbours across the street, let alone the street lights.  Give us some slack.