Christmas eve eve

Somehow December 23rd has arrived. It's just too bad that January and February never seem to go by anywhere near as fast. I'm proud to be able to say that after my post-swim trip to the mall this morning - arriving at 7am and getting a really kickin' parking spot - I finished my Christmas shopping one day earlier than last year. I didn't used to wait so long, but somehow it just keeps happening. And although my family will ask me what I want, I am not a fan of asking what they want. It sort of takes the fun out of it, you know? It's Christmas morning, you give them their present and it's like, "Oh yeah, here's that thing I told you to buy for me and you went to the store and got it. Thanks!" I mean, I suppose it takes away that element of fear that they won't like it, but it still just doesn't seem to be as much fun. The exception to this rule is my mother, who is absolutely impossible to buy for. She has everything she needs and wants it seems, and if there is something she decides she wants, she goes and gets it. My father, on the other hand, I never have trouble with, so at least that's a good thing. I also am interested to see what my 7-year old niece things of the game Perfection. Remember that one? Where you have to beat the timer by putting the little shaped pegs in the right holes before the timer runs out? Hopefully it will prove to be more fun than frustrating.

So what else? Pretty much nothing but absolute frigid cold. We had one day where the warmest it felt all day long was 4. Air temperatures with highs around 20. Oh, but today it will be about 23. Some days the windchill puts us below zero. I understand that this is sort of what you know you have to deal with by living here, but this is awfully early. I mean, we're only two days into winter. We were also due to get quite a snow storm last Saturday night. I've lived here long enough to know that you never know what you're going to get with those things. I can remember more than one night growing up being 100% convinced that school would be canceled the following day, only to awaken to not so much as a flake. It can go the other way, too.

So I went down to Boston that night, fully expecting to get trapped there for the night with snow starting sometime around dinner time. Dinner came and went, no snow. 10:30 at night, still no snow. I'm not sure when exactly it started, but I do know that by 12:30, it was finally coming down pretty good. That left me with a decision to make. I could either leave right then and hope that I'd make it before it got too bad, knowing that the further north I went the less snow there was supposed to be. Or I could stay, and likely get burried and trapped until sometime late the following afternoon since it would probably be snowing for more than 12 more hours.

I decided to make a break for it. I drive a Nissan Sentra, which could probably only be worse in the snow if it were rear-wheel drive. I figured maybe driving on 95 wouldn't be so bad because it was light and fluffy snow, and maybe it would just be blowing around since it had only started recently. Well, I drove incredibly slow towards the highway, and when it came time to turn onto the on-ramp, I had a hard time seeing it. At that point I started questioning my decision, but I was too far into it to turn around.

So, onto the interstate. Well, the snow was light and fluffy, but also coming down hard enough that the road was covered in it. Fortunately, almost all of the cars were driving equally slowly, crawling along at about 25mph. You know, except for those SUV's who seem to think that just because they have four-wheel drive they also possess magical powers that make it impossible to slide off the road while driving 50mph through the snow. I can't tell you how many times I've been passed by a car like that on the highway, only to find the same car a few miles further up, off the road and turned facing in the wrong direction. As for me, the speed wasn't really an option, and upon reaching what I would describe as a slight incline, I nearly didn't make it to the top because my rear wheels kept skidding out.

Surely I was questioning my decision at that point. It had taken me what seemed like 20 minutes to go one exit. I couldn't decide if I did or didn't like having other cars around me. On the one hand, I was afraid if my tires skidded out again at my blazing speed, I'd crash into one of them. On the other hand, I needed their shared light to see where I was going, otherwise all I could see was the illuminated blizzard coming down toward my headlights.

So essentially, for about 15-20 miles, I thought that maybe I was going to die. Or maybe I'd have to spend the night sleeping in my car under an overpass. At least I had a backpack with some extra clothes since I had planned on spending the night in Boston, but at that point, I figured I would actually be worse off turning around. Then, without warning, the snow wasn't so bad. Is that pavement I see? I was driving 40mph and I wasn't fearing for my life. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped snowing entirely, and I zipped home the rest of the way on completely dry roads. It was crazy. I don't think it started snowing in New Hampshire until about 8:00 the next morning and even then we got maybe an inch. Boston got like 15". So that was an adventurous evening.

So that's about it for now. Still swimming, where the pool was quite cold this morning, riding the trainer and going nowhere and running in way too many layers because it's so freakin' freezing out. It's supposed to get into the mid 30's tomorrow. It'll probably feel downright tropical.