Snow Day. Sort Of.

Wednesday morning we awoke to a dusting of snow, with sleet piling on top of it.  Quickly that all changed to rain and we dealt with a day of cold rain.  About three o'clock in the afternoon it all changed--very quickly--to snow.  Very heavy, very wet snow.  And it was coming down so hard that, even though it was still 35 degrees, it wasn't melting as quickly as it was falling.

All of this made for a disastrous commute--for those driving.  People reported twelve- and fifteen-hour commutes.  Myself, well, I made it home in twenty minutes and thought that, at least this month, my exorbitant rent may have been worth it.  (Nightmarish tales of 1/2-day-long commutes here:  http://www.wtop.com/?sid=2250574&nid=25)

Some photos Philip took of the snow from the balcony:

Yesterday (Thursday) we were allowed to work from home.  I took advantage of that:  I slept until 8:20, then booted up my computer, and went about my normal routine, though in my house clothes, and with ready access to the water-cooker and tea.  Very nice--and productive--day.

Metro. Broken.

Another fun commute home on metro:  it took twice as long as normal.  First, the train ahead of ours had a door problem and had to be off-loaded, which took about ten minutes.  So, in the tunnel we sat.  But that was still better than being on the train being off-loaded!

Then, when we pulled into Metro Center, the platform was so full that I could barely get out of the train to head upstairs to the Dread Line platform.  When I got up there, trains were due in eight, 18, and 20-something minutes.  That'd be fine on a Sunday morning, but not at rush hour, where anything less than every three minutes just doesn't work.

By the time the Red train did arrive, the platform was so thick with people that it was impossible to move.  We boarded the train, but left a crowd of people six deep behind.  At Farragut, hundreds more left behind.  At Dupont the operator couldn't get the doors shut and threatened to empty the train.  Tack on another five minutes for that.

Just another symptom of a transit system that is starved of money and broken.  When I read about what huge increases in ridership are on the way, well, it makes me laugh.

Oranges

I had dinner the other night with former colleagues Jamie and Peggy.  At the end of the meal Peggy surprised me with oranges, grown on trees in her backyard and picked just two days before.  They're yummy!

My Blog: The Restart

Welcome to my blog.  I've decided to restart my blog, after abandoning it a couple of years ago, because it's an easy way to post photos and narrative.  I had tried to use my website for that but abandoned it more than a year ago because it was just too difficult to create the pages and keep up with it as a real-time vehicle.  It just didn't serve the purpose.  Now I'm working on an overhaul of my website; creating this blog is part of that.

I expect to use blogging as a compliment to my website:  I'll still use my website to post more in-depth news, photos, and narrative, while I'll use this to post photos on-the-fly when traveling and while about town.  Feel free to leave comments.  Thanks for reading.

Don't forget to visit my website at www.quadewhitmire.com.