dejana | There's no place like home for the holidays.

I blame

teh_maskmaid for the subject line. :P

Grargh. My right eye is particularly bad today. SO ANNOYING. I really need to stop procrastinating on finding an eye doctor. *sigh*

Snow! So much snow! I had finally gotten to the point where I was actually looking forward to some snow for the first time in probably more than ten years, but I forgot what a giant pain it is to drive in the stuff. And it's supposed to snow all day long tomorrow as well. Blargh.

Minus the driving, though, the Saturday snowstorm was rather nice in its way. When I finished lazing around I went out and shoveled the sidewalk at my mom's, and then walked up the street to the gas station for some snacks. (And a frozen pizza, as my mom has almost no food in the house. I finally tried DiGiorno's. Not bad.) I was reminded of what it means to live in Minnesota. The night was peaceful and quiet, the roads were empty save for pedestrians and someone on skis, the snow was falling and it was overall a lovely night to be about. With global warming and all we haven't had a snowy winter or a white Christmas in some years, so I have to admit I've been rather looking forward to it this time around, and was much more friendly to the idea even while shoveling the sidewalk a second time around midnight.

Walking definitely beats driving when it comes to snow. I had hoped to continue holing up at my mom's until the storm was over, but sadly it was not to be. I got a call from my mom about 1 AM. Her ride from her temp job at the factory refused to drive her all the way home, and stranded her downtown. She called a few cab companies but none of them were driving due to the snow. So I had to shovel out my car after all and venture downtown to pick her up.

I am so, SO glad I got new tires after Thanksgiving. There would have been absolutely no way otherwise. As it is, I can barely believe I actually made it all the way there and back without getting stuck in a snowbank or something. I just barely got out of my snowed-in parking space and out onto the main road, and crawled all the way downtown while avoiding people walking around (and there were lots of them, even at 1 AM. o_O At least there were hardly any other cars). The roads were largely unplowed, and like a moron I didn't think to bring a shovel from my mom's, so I don't know what I would've done if I'd gotten stuck somewhere. My mom's cell phone was out of minutes, so I had no way to reach her, the only reason she was able to call me at all was a nice security guard at one of the hospitals had let her into the lobby.

And of course, this is in my hometown where the city is built on a hill. And of course, the hospital where Mom was waiting is two blocks up said hill. When I got downtown I found a road uphill that was partially clear and gave it a shot. I made it up a little more than a block and a half before I couldn't go any further. Fortunately there was an alley at the halfway mark that had been recently plowed (the parking lot and small roadway plowing folks were out and working full-tilt, while the big city plows were nowhere in sight o_O) so I backed down a bit, turned into that, and drove over to the avenue next to the hospital. The alley plow had continued into what was probably the garbage pickup lane of the hospital, so I drove in there and parked, and just hoped nobody would show up and get mad at me in the time it took to walk the remaining half-block uphill and over to the hospital and back. ^^;;

So I scooted up there as fast as I could in ankle-deep snow with no boots, haha. There was a scary moment when I didn't find my mom at the main doors and feared she'd decided to wander off to a "better," but completely unguessable, location, but fortunately she was just at another door. We slipped and slid back to the car, and slipped and slid all the way home, and spent a bit shoveling out a bigger parking space for me so I didn't have to worry about my car being cut in half by the plow like some repetitive Toyota commercial. And that was my Saturday night adventure.

Sunday the snow was over, and I managed to head out roughly on time, after taking my mom on some errands and having to abandon her at a bus stop so I could get going. ^^;; I made good time back to the Twin Cities, and even had a little spare time to relax - until I dug out the invitation to

pkat and

shorinai's dinner and discovered it started at 3 PM, not 4 PM as I had thought. O_O;; Fortunately when I called and checked in I found they weren't eating until 5, so I was able to rush over there without being obscenely late. ^^;; I did, however, completely use up my Lucky Snow Driving karma by getting lazy when it came to parking and launching my car into an extremely snowy space I couldn't even entirely get into before my wheels started spinning. I fail. x_x But I decided to worry about that later. >.>

So then there was Thanksgiving Revisted with some Detour folks and some assorted friends of the hosts, many (all?) of whom seemed to be former Detour folks or other-con folks. Good food and conversation was had. And after that, "Apples to Apples" as only a bunch of twisted geek freaks can play it. About all I can say about that is "Put it in." xD

And after that

pkat and Kale (who I must say is one of the all-around best people I've ever had the pleasure to meet), and a couple of random guys from the street, were kind enough to help me dig out my car and push it free from the Snowtrap of Doom. ^^;;; And that was that, or will be until Anime Madness at my place this Saturday night. :3

My car is now a disaster of street-salt artistry, but it's going to snow again tomorrow, so there's really no point in washing it until Wednesday.

Tonight I'm at work, surprise surprise, but I did take some time before my shift to start putting my Christmas tree together. ^^ My sister and I wrestled it upstairs last night, and today I was able to get the lights and garland on before I had to leave. Ornaments tomorrow if I get up early enough, and then pictures. :)

*pesters

secretpoet via text messages for no other reason than recently acquiring the number* mwahahaha

Oh, and for those who are interested in such things, I have two new Harry Potter ficlets waiting to be edited, and a full one-shot fic about halfway written. Fic postage sometime this month if all goes well. (I need LJ communities in which to post! HP fandom is big and scary and I don't know where to even begin looking for good ones that are friendly to newbies. If you know some, please recommend. At the moment I'm writing canon pairings and genfic.)

And I'm finding the very presence of all these new "adult content" options and flags irksome for no particularly good reason. >\