Blizzard’s Coming

 First off, yes I disappeared for awhile.  Things just really got crazy at the end of last semester.  Thanksgiving at home went quite well, though as you can imagine I did a lot of studying, since finals began the week following Thanksgivng.  Following Thanksgiving, Shannon and I studied together in my apartment that Monday.  My first exam was Torts and while I thought it went okay, I later found out that it didn’t go as well as I thought it did.  Then the first Monday in December was my Criminal Law exam, with testing conditions a complete mess. It was another exam I thought had gone well…except not so much either.  Now going into this, the exam that scared me the most was Contracts, followed closely by Civil Procedure (and the exams were in that order as well).  I was definitely drained following the Contracts exam and had absolutely no idea how I’d done.  And I’m not even going to explain the colossal mess that my Civil Procedure exam was. However, imagine my surprise when my grade in Contracts was a B+ and my grade in Civil Procedure was a B! Two highest grades in my substantive law classes.  

The weekend of December 11th, between my Contracts and Civil Procedure final was on the depressing side however.  Late afternoon on the 11th, Maxie (one of my dogs) fell outside and broke her leg.  Given her age, my mom had to have her put down 🙁 I did a lot of crying that weekend, but it didn’t take too long to start remembering her when she had more energy.  I think on some level I’d mourned her some time ago, when she began doing little more than sleep all day. Plus, the fact that I had a week to get used to the idea before going home and being confronted with the memories of her there (and on the flip side, I think having moved out to a place where there are no memories of her helped as well). Christmas break was great and it was awesome to see Stephen for a few days. It was nice to see Jason as well, but he and I were home together for a few weeks.  I ended up driving up the afternoon of December 17th and drove back to school the afternoon of Sunday, January 9th.

As far as Christmas goes, three presents of note and they’re all practical. In fact, I giggle a little when I think about the fact that they’re my favorite (and by favorite, I mean like a favorite toy Christmas morning when you were a kid).   First is the new snow brush for my car.  In early December, we got a storm system that dropped a mess of mixed precipitation, leading to significant ice accumulations on my car that were a serious pain to clean off – I think it took me 30+ minutes to clean off my car enough to drive it following that storm. So I asked for a snow brush/ice scraper that has a long handle (initially so that I could more easily get snow off the top of my car as well).  For Christmas, I got a snowbrush/ice scraper that in it’s smallest form is about the same size as most ice scrapers. However, it extends to probably 2 1/2 feet long with a rotating brush and awesome ice scraper. The long handle also means I get a better angle for cleaning off my windshield.  Since I’ve been back at school, I’ve had to get ice off my car three different times and each time was significantly easier than it was in December.  I also asked for a new microwave cart for Christmas.  The one I had gotten when I moved down here is fairly wobbly – many times I thought just opening and closing the microwave that the cart would topple over or something. My parents got me a very sturdy wooden cart that’s pretty large, has a drawer and a few shelves and still fits in the same place as my old cart. It’s awesome.  Finally, I’d told my mom that I wanted a new toaster for Christmas as well. The one I bought when I moved out was a $7 toaster and while it toasted alright, it wasn’t deep enough to handle a regular sized bagel.  Well, my mom apparently passed that wish along to Stephen and he bought me a REALLY nice toaster 🙂 I know he got it seriously onsale from Amazon and it’s near top of the line. It’s a four slice toaster with removable crumb trays,along with bagel and defrost settings. The bagel setting allows you to toast just one side of the bagel if you put the bagel in the toaster a certain way and the defrost is for things like frozen waffles – the toaster defrosts the waffle before it toasts it. So no more waffles that are burnt on the outside and cold in the inside!  Plus, the toaster on its side fits on top of the microwave cart as well (since my microwave is pretty tiny).

Second semester began on January 18th and we pretty much hit the ground running.  It’s been busy busy busy. I like my schedule more than I thought I would, though I still miss having two late days.  I have two classes where I can’t take notes on my laptop, so tonight I turned in my coin jar (which was over $169) and I’m going to get a portable wand scanner made by Brookstone. It’ll allow me to scan my notes and still put them in OneNote. The reason I want to do that is to keep me organized. It’s too easy for me to forget my Contracts Notebook and have to write in a different notebook that day – however chances are I’ll forget where those notes are. The portable wand scanner will allow me to take it to class and scan my notes after class is over (I’ve got breaks all over the place).

Two other notes before I get into the title of the entry.  Just before Thanksgiving, I received a calling 🙂 Relief Society chorister 🙂 Which is awesome – I get to deal with music and still enjoy the hymns in sacrament meeting. In addition, yesterday I was asked to speak in Sacrament meeting on Feb 20th.  I told my mom about it and I think she might come down.  Given that Sister Nelson last summer also expressed an interest in coming down when I spoke, my mom’s also going to let her know she’s welcome to come if she wants. I’ve done a little bit of research, but most of it’s not going to get done until at least this weekend. I had a memo/motion due today and I have oral arguments based upon it due on Wednesday afternoon. Later in the semester I’ll have an appellate brief due that I’ve heard is going to be in the neighborhood of 20-30 pages, if the rumors from the 2Ls and 3Ls are anywhere near right. 

Now for the title of the entry…at this point, there are widespread indications that where I live will see 18-20 inches of snow by mid-afternoon Wednesday in addition to sustained winds of 25-40mph with gusts up to 60mph.  That snowfall total does include what we’re getting tonight, but we’re only supposed to get 2-4 inches tonight at best. The weather guys are fairly certain where I live will see at least a foot, but closer to a foot and a half and cannot rule out more than that. The Chicago metro area could see 2 FEET of snow or more.  This is the first time ever around here where I’m seeing snowfall amounts talked about in increments of FEET in addition to inches. I saw it a few times when I was living up in Marquette, MI while attending Northern Michigan University for a year.  We could see snowfall rates of 2-3 inches per hour at the height of the storm Tuesday night and that doesn’t even t

ake into account any thundersnow we might get (if you’re unfamiliar with it, this article is a decent explanation – opens in new window). If we get thundersnow, we may see snowfall rates approach 4 inches/hour.  I’m seriously goggling at the amount of snow I could see. The reason I’m goggling is that so many things have to come together to get snowfall like this when you don’t live near a body of water or on a mountain.  While I’m not that far away from Lake Michigan, I’m too far for most lake effect events – it is possible for a lake effect plume to reach me, but it’s REALLY rare.  As a result of all of this, I’m under a blizzard warning starting at 3pm tomorrow and lasting through 3pm on Wednesday.  Snow’s supposed to start mid-afternoon tomorrow and last through around noon on Wednesday. However the wind is going to literally blow it everywhere.  They’re warning people about the possibility of 4′-8′ drifts. I’d be interested to know how much snow we actually get, but with the wind it’ll be nearly impossible to get any kind of actual measurement. There are two different ways this could play out – if we get a drier snow than it really will blow everywhere and create a ground blizzard even without falling snow. If we get a heavy wet snow then it’s not quite as easy to blow around but it’ll also stick to power lines and trees at which point power outages and downed tree limbs become a hazard.  Even with all this snow – I’ll take all of this snow over serious amounts of ice that other places in the country will see.  I’ll take any amount of snow over a freezing rain event.  The final problem with the storm system that’s approaching is that our high on Wednesday is 20 degrees, and that’s going to dropping as the snow stops because the arctic air will be moving in.  It’s Friday before our temperatures make it above 15 degrees. 15 degrees is important because when it’s below 15 degrees, the salt they use on the streets is fairly ineffective.   It’s not until Saturday that we even sniff 20 degrees. So when the weather forecasters say that large areas of the country are going to see a blizzard, they’re not kidding!

"Life is measured not by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."