We got lucky here, just an inch – what my Mom used to call decorator snow. Clearing off the cars took longer than shoveling the sidewalk. It’s cold as fuck out there, but sunny and we’re getting SO much extra light reflected off the snow – love that!

Roads are in good shape – sand/salt trucks were coming through all night. Pre-pandemic we were on a Metrobus route to the Pentagon, so that kicked us up a notch on the road clearing priority – we haven’t had a Metrobus come through here in… near 2 years now I’d say, but it seems they haven’t changed how the snow clearing works – which is nice. And thanks to that, I was able to get up to Starbucks and we have lattes and cold brew and breakfast sandwiches. (A better person would have simply stayed home, but the 90 seconds I spend picking up coffee is a ridiculously large social outlet for me.)

And I found out something new about my car! I knew that if it was remote started, it would only run for 10 minutes. (I guess it’s for when you either a) forget you started it or b) somehow butt started it, even though you have to hit the button twice.) It will also only remote start 2 times in a row, then you have to get in the car and manually start it. But still, as my brother was clearing the car, it was fun to say “hey, do you want me to start mine up?” and then just hit the button to make it happen from the living room, LOL. I really love that feature. Don’t need heated seats if the car is warm when you get in it!

In looking back through old pictures, this past week was also when I temporarily fostered Spot the Leopard Gecko from the classroom I’d been subbing in – if I remember right, she was supposed to go home with one of the kids every weekend, but there was snow, classes were canceled, but the building was still open – so I was able to beg a maintenance man to let me in and retrieve Spot and she stayed with me for a week. The dog didn’t care, and the cats pretty much lost their shit over having a lizard in the house.

There was a lot of snow on January 29th…