The Winter Olympics

My blog hiatus has hopefully ended. Life was a bit crazy there for a while. Work has been pretty busy since we're preparing for our huge conference in two weeks. I'll be spending a week in Atlanta at the end of the month.

School work has slowed to almost nothing. I turned in my thesis two weeks ago and my adviser wrote back with only a few suggestions for revisions. I actually defend it on Thursday in front of a small panel. My defense is scheduled for 2 pm, so keep me in your prayers! The defense is basically a 25-35 minute presentation of my paper followed by a 10-15 minute Q & A session (in which I am the one answering the questions).

This week was record breaking for DC and it's been cool (figuratively and literally) living here this winter. We saw record breaking snow fall and the most days on record the Federal Government has closed. DC has had the snowiest winter than all other cities in the United States, second only to Syracuse, NY.

I ventured out yesterday to clear my car from the 3-4 foot snow drifts, clear the front sidewalk for us and pedestrians, and shovel the snow from the driveway so I could get my car into it. It took me over three hours and I couldn't help but think if it as the DC Olympics. There are a lot of sports in which residents took part: car and parking spot clearing, sledding, sidewalk clearing, dodging cars as they walked in the streets due to buried walkways, and general walking since the Metro was closed and buses weren't running.

Surprisingly, I'm not hurting too much from my three hour adventure and now have a cleared sidewalk, driveway, and car of which to be proud. Here are some pics of the Snowpocalypse as we have lovingly nicknamed out storm:

It's kind of hard to tell, but the snow piles were 3-4 feet high.The picture below was taken before the second storm came and dumped another 15" on the ground.

We helped to push our neighbors out of snow-stuck spots.
This neighbor caught a lucky break as a Caterpillar came by and made the snow-freeing much faster!My car after I cleared off the snow and dug it out of the snow drifts.Another car I found while clearing out the snow.Below: A finished walkway, with the shovel stuck in the snow to show how deep it was.
The snow was about 5-6 inches taller than the top of the shovel.Below: Ryan's (a roomy's) care buried in our driveway.
You can see where I had already started clearing the drive behind it.
Below: The finished product with my car parked in it! Hard to tell from the pictures,
but the drive is about 30 feet long.And Done.