We survived the storm! Last week Mother Nature really hit Michigan with
some of that “pretty” white stuff. Wednesday afternoon, the snow started
to really come down. On the way home I got behind the flying V of snow
plows and that leg of my trip was easy going. Then I hit M-47, which is a
Freeway, but I sure wasn’t speeding along today… The highway was not
plowed and right down the middle of mostly farmland. The wind was
billowing across the open area and I couldn’t see more than 15 or 20 feet
in front of my car. There was atleast six or more inches of snow on the
ground and everyone around me wanted to go faster than my cruising speed
of around 15 mph… just because you have four wheel drive, doesn’t mean
you can see any better… Thursday after the storm, Susan and I spent
about 45 minutes shoveling the snow out of our driveway. It was upto two
feet of snow in some spots and our sub-division wasn’t even plowed! Making
a small dent in the road in front of our house (which was about a foot of
snow deep), we reared our cars down the driveway and managed to plow
through the snow. It was slow going to the end of our street, but it was
do-able. Then came Webster, it was actually plowed… but only on one
side, luckily no one wanted to go the other way while we were traveling
down this “one way” road! Yes the storm was bad, in fact there was an
alert released to Saginaw County the night before to stay off the roads as
people were getting stuck and abandoning their cars (in the middle of the
roadways!) I got to work without too much trouble, but my officemate
apparently got stuck twice on the way in, decided it wasn’t worth making
into work and got stuck twice on his way home!

I needed to get to work, because I had planned on taking Friday/Monday
off and needed to talk to my boss to make sure she was okay with that (and
she was!) The trek up north was easy going, the roads were clear and the
sun was shining. We stayed the night with Susan’s folks, and headed up to
Tech on Saturday. The statues were pretty amazing this year (as usual =P
), and hopefully I’ll have pictures up soon. It was a little cold, but I
didn’t need any of my snowgear I had brought. As the day went on, the
clouds came and soon it began to snow a little. We ended up getting a bite
to eat at The Library (the brewery, not the place with books 😉 ). The
service was pretty crappy, and we waited almost an hour before we got our
food. For some reason, we got behind a big table (the girls hockey team),
and our waiter wouldn’t bump up our order (he only got a 36 cent tip…)
After we ate, it was up to the McInnes Ice Arena to watch the Huskies play
Wisconsin. Our seats weren’t that great, but we had a good time, even if
Tech lost…

Winter Storm, part 2… The trip back to Michigamme was almost as bad as
my commute home from work a couple days before, luckily I wasn’t driving!
Visibility was poor, but the roads were plowed, and again people wanted to
zip by us. When a car did race by, I knew we would see him in the ditch,
and soon up the road we did… he was being helped by another person, so
we didn’t actually stop, but he sort of deserved it for going so fast in
crappy weather. The next day wasn’t much better and we ended up playing
Cranium pretty much the whole day. It’s a pretty fun game and everyone was
really getting into it in the end. After switching teams, the boys were
champions over the girls, but it was close (a little too close!)
Back to work, with still not much to do… I’m still working at Dow, but
I do have an interview this Friday! The whole thing moved really quickly
and the job involves actual programming, I’m pretty excited! The company
is DICE Corporation and is out of Bay City. If you want to take a look at
what they do it’s over here. Wish me luck!