Yes everyone, I stared the beast in the face, and lived to tell the tale.

My first inclination that things were bad came from work.  Normally, when it forecasts for some cold or snow, folks will gleefully appear in my doorway and ask how my Tucson blood is surviving.  They relish in sharing the fact that I park my car so that I can remote start it from my window before heading out at the end of the day.  But they weren’t like that this time.  Monday morning, they were popping into my office with real concern.  “Make sure you cover your ears, face and fingers.  It only takes minutes for frostnip to settle in.”  Hmmm.  “You can put your food outside if the electricity goes out to keep it cold.  You do have a heat source independent of power right?”  Uh oh.  And by the time the notice came out in the afternoon that campus was closed on Tuesday, I was pretty sure we were in for the big one.  They’d just cancelled life on Tuesday, things were bad.

Monday night, as the wind began to howl, we watched the temperature drop, and drop, and drop.  As we headed to bed and the temperature was at -6, with a -30 wind chill, we prayed forgiveness for the puppies we must have kicked in a previous life.

Tuesday dawned, my very first snow day ever (we almost had one when I was in third grade, the dirt roads were so bad the bus couldn’t get through. But the school was so small, they just sent a pickup truck around to pick everyone up. Foiled!), clear, calm and COLD! We waited for the sun to warm things up, and at around 11, when it hit a whopping 3 degrees, we drove into town to enjoy breakfast on my unexpected day off.

Remember our little pond?

Look ma, no skates!

The temperatures have slowly climbed back to sane levels. Today we are in the 50’s, with up to 2 inches of rain expected. Early this morning we were even greeted with THUNDER! For some reason I thought thunder was a mostly dry climate occurrence, so it made me irrationally happy to hear it.  I’d like to think of it as the weather’s apology for Monday.

I hope everyone is staying warm (or cool, you pesky Arizonans). We will likely venture out in the rain to the Mast General Store.  There is always something random going on. We just love it!