Two weekends ago I went for a long walk and fall was in full throttle over the area. There were trees with yellowing (and oranging and redding) leaves, and the ground was covered in color. And then a storm came the following monday and it was all gone. Winter has arrived, and I don't care what the calendar says. There's, what, two more weeks until the solstice and the official beginning of the season? Yeah right. It's here.
We've had almost a week of temperatures averaging in the 30's and the ice yesterday morning was the worst I've experienced. There was rain throughout the night, freezing at some point so that by the time I got out to my car on Monday there was maybe a quarter of an inch of ice cementing my car closed. The ground was so iced over that I was slipping and sliding around just trying to open my car door. I've said this before, but a person born and raised in California has no business driving in these conditions. And I was a little terrified about driving on the highways in this mess. I mean, really. There were reports of accidents all up and down the major highways and I had a meeting an hour away.
Of course I called my boss and asked if I REALLY had to go to this meeting, and he told me to use my best judgment. As if I can say 'no' to that. So I looked up the road conditions on the internet and found that the roads I had to take to get to my meeting seemed to have been well sanded, and that the biggest challenge to me would be to get to the highway. And I know there are no big hills between me and the highway, so off I went. Going maybe 5 miles an hour to get onto the main roads (I have this thought- I don't know where it came from- that if you go really slow in the ice or snow you'll have a better chance of arriving somewhere safely. Right now it's just a superstition, but I'm sticking to it. It's worked so far). It ended up taking me twice as long to get to Marlboro, but I got there. And I went straight home afterwards and worked from home. Sigh.
So winter's here. Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks. Some of them were taken with my cell phone, and the others were with a real camera. Sorry about the quality of the photos.
Hey Vincent!
Three days later, and bam. It's winter. That's just the way it goes over here.
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