Skype and Ice

Well, the ice storm hasn't been as bad as forecast. Everything is covered in ice, save the roads. They are slick, but not too bad. Now it is snowing... not sure if that will help much. But it looks nice.

Also, last night Shannon and I talked with Rhonda and Michelle on Skype, for free. :) Rhonda and Michelle planned on using Skype, but Shannon and I didn't have a webcam/mic that worked. So, we bought one and now we can chat with Michelle in England too!

Having Skype is easy, and I'm going to advocate having it for family members who want to see our baby but aren't in Tulsa (Mom and others). So, get yourself a webcam and a free Skype account and going the party!

January Ice Storm

So, we are going to get some ice. Luckily* the drive to work was super-clear. Traffic and all were down to a minimum. But look at what we have coming.

At 7:15 this morning...
And an hour later at 8:15 it looks like this...
So pretty much any time now we are gonna start getting some nasty winter mix. Sounds crummy.

*It not a good thing that we made it to work. We knew that would happen. Going home is going to be the problem. And our car SUCKS on ice/snow. So we'll see. Roads aren't salted (not a surprise for Tulsa) so it should be guaranteed ice b 5:30. Awesome.

News

Today Jenette and Chris should find out whether they are having a boy or a girl. :) I'm excited. Then in about 2 months Jayme can tell us too!

Christmas was good. We spent some great time with Rhonda, Michelle, Jenette, Chris, Gary, Dave, Grandma Fuller, Steve, Margo, Adam, Morgan, Brooke, Judah, Tate, Caleb, Jaxon, Boaz, Tara, Dan, Bobbie, Jeff, Brendan, Trevor, Macy, Grant, Marsha, and Kevin (that's a lot of people, and by next Christmas the list will have at least 3 more names). We played games, ate good food, went to church, opened gifts, drove home, saw my mom, saw Newgen and Andrea. All sorts of goodness!

The only part of the drive home that was hard was in Oklahoma. Yes, KS has basically no snow, but OK had a good deal. The construction on I-35 sucked. The only partly plowed the road so we went 40 through the construction and still slid a bit. Then in Tulsa it was even worse! Again only part of the roads were cleared, the rest were icy and lumpy. Shannon drove well and we got to our house only to fail at driving up our driveway into the garage. So, at 2am Shannon shoveled and salted the whole driveway while I slowly unpacked the car parked on the street. Then he drove it in and we went to bed. Guess what was clear the next morning... our driveway.

Geepers! If they would plow and salt they wouldn't have the problems. Or even just plow. Or even just salt! But no. We don't have those luxuries here. If you recall, this was an issue last year as well... post 1 or post 2 or post 3

Winter Dance

We went to Manhattan on Saturday to watch Michelle perform in K-State's Winter Dance. It was entertaining. But that was only part of the weekends mentionables. Also in the list:

• Getting to see Gary and Linda. They flew in from CO earlier in the week and we got to see them Saturday and Sunday. That was nice. We saw Gary in March (?), but I haven't seen Linda since May of 08. Jeepers!
• Really slow, some-what crappy service from Houlihan's. That isn't normal. That place is usually really good. Also, my chicken was super-dry and practically rosemary-free (it was Grilled Rosemary Chicken).
• The roads were REALLY icy from Salina and about 20 miles south. I was driving and could feel it getting bad, so we slowed down from 70 mph to about 50 mph. But then we saw a wreck (a big one, like 5 cars) and slowed down some more, maybe about 40 mph. Then we went over an overpass, which was super-slick. I almost lost control of the car, but luckily I didn't nor did I hit anyone. So, I slowed down to about 30 mph. And drove between 30-45 for about 45 minutes. It was crazy. I could feel the car slide on each overpass, which I just coasted over. We saw another wreck, a pick-up rolled onto it's side, about a mile after the first. It was pretty nasty.
• We have our car back!
  

We got home around 7:30. That is really early for us. We planned to stop in Wichita and see family/friends. But we didn't want to get stuck in the weather, so we just kept on driving. At home we put lights on our tree (no ornaments yet) and ordered some pizza. This was the first time in the past four months it didn't feel gross to eat it. Maybe we won't toss an entire pizza in a week.

Wow.

So, the city of Tulsa does own at least one salt truck. Too bad he was just driving around and showing off his salt (which he had a lot of). Because he wasn't using it.

I guess information that the storm is coming 2 days ahead and then witnessing drizzle at the very beginning while watching the radar and noticing a storm building up right over Tulsa isn't enough reason to actually salt the roads. Maybe the city is waiting to see how many highways they can close and how many accidents they can have. Then, when everyone is already home from work and school, then we might* salt the roads.

*I'm guessing not.

Ice Ice Baby

Yesterday Shannon and I played hockey in Tulsa and won. It was great fun and everyone is so nice (as most roller hockey players are). It was about 70 degrees while we played and a bit windy but not bad. After the game we went to eat. When we were done, which was about 4, we came out of the restaurant and were like "Dang-Brr!" It dropped 10 degrees in an hour!

So we did a bit of shopping and by 10 o'clock at night, it was well below freezing and had started to precipitate. Unfortunately, it was just sleet and freezing rain. When we woke up in the morning it looked like reverse snow.

We got ready for work and headed out at the normal time, because guess who doesn't have to scrape the ice off their car any more. That's right, us.

We didn't get very far. I can tell you that. We drove about 10-15 mph through our development and then went to stop at the sign at 81st street. Well, instead of stopping our car decided to slide until it hit something. That something was just a curb, but we hit it pretty hard. I believe I heard our tire say "Ouww. I hate you guys!"

So we turned right slowly onto 81st street and began to creep up the hill. The road was a sheet of ice. No salt, just ice. We started up the little hill and were giving our selves plenty of room from the car in front of us. When we got to the top of the little hill, we stopped because the cars in front of us were stopped, with a slight bit of sliding-down-hill. Why was traffic stopped? Allow this picture to illustrate.


The blue arrows show the path of our car. Our second (left) turn was not initially part of our commute, but it had to happen. The white blob is a horse-type trailer that was partially blocking the oncoming traffic. The truck was not attached, I'm assuming it got stuck, un-hitched the trailer and left so that traffic wasn't totally blocked off. Anyway.

Since oncoming traffic was blocked, they were trying to get around the trailer by coming into our lane of traffic (this is represented by the black and orange blobs above). The only thing was, they were going uphill. So, the two black cars were stuck. That's right. They were in our lane, facing us, with their tires spinning. Nice. So the cars in front of Shann and I eventually all turned left and we then followed.

As we were turning, we noticed that the orange blob was a large salt-truck. He was stuck behind the two stuck black cars.

Eventually we turned around and went home (arrival of which was about 1 mile and 30 minutes after departure). The salt-truck made it through and about 1 1/2 hours later we tried again and made it to work.

The roads in Tulsa are horrible. They take ages to do construction, need to do reparis on about 75% of the roads, and apparently can't salt the roads in advance.

There are no...

Flashlights. We went to an super packed Wal-mart today and they are out of flashlights. This ice storm still has 12,000 people in Manhattan without power (that's since Tuesday morning).

We are lucky to have power. Even though I have a final tomorrow, I at least have heat and light to study by.

Pink Snow

They now use something pink to de-ice our sidewalks. Maybe it's peeps.

Fallen Pole-o's

On our way back to Manhattan from GC, we saw a lot of broken and buried power lines. It was quite crazy. I really don't think lil' Kalvesta had any power when we left (still). This picture is the best I got while Shannon drove home. If you click it, you can see a pole just laying there, covered in ice, not doing it's job.

I must say though, Maria and Julia both have fun pictures to check out of the huge wire towns that collapsed.

As it was

This is the light outside of Rhonda's.

It was very sunny after it finally stopped raining and snowing and sleeting.
It was really cool how the said sun reflected in the ice.

There was a lot of ice on all the trees. It rained a lot before it froze.
Then when it did freeze, it continued to ice and rain.

Just some ice on the trees. It was really pretty in real life. Very Chronicles of Narnia like.
When the sun caught all the ice on the trees, they just sparkled. Very pretty.

Shannon, Michelle, and I took at walk down their crazy ally and took some pictures.
This is a neat close up of a pine tree.

And then they sneezed.

After Wichita, we went to good ol' GC. Shannon and the boys Wii'ed it up. It was pretty fun to watch them play. Its always fun to watch people play for the first time.


Before we opened gifts, the kids sang us a song and posed for some pictures. From left to right we have, Brooke, Macy, Tate, Morgan, Brendan, Trevor, Cortez, Adam, Jevon. Macy, Brendan, and Trevor are siblings, then the other 6 are Steve and Margo's children. They are all quite fun to watch and talk to.


Christmas at Rhondas was pretty fun too. Shannon and I got pirate cards. See?


Thursday was the Texas Bowl, K-State versus Rutgers. We went to Andy's to watch it (he has NFL Network). K-State started out okay, then totally sucked it up. We lost. But an interesting note is I have some family friends who went to Rutgers in NJ.

Oh, the black outs. We had approximately 13 too many hours of no power in Garden. It was officially declared a disaster area (not just Garden, but most of that part of KS). Garden didn't have it as bad as other areas either I don't think. Despite that we did have over 1/2 inch of ice on everything. Then some snow to seal it in. It was pretty, but sucky at the same time.