Well, I'm back in the swing of things. Energy levels have been mostly normal since Wednesday, but I'm still unable to eat much. It's like my stomach shrank significantly while I was sick. All told, I think I lost about 12 real pounds in 3 days (excluding any related dehydration losses). I hit a low yesterday morning of 189 and was back up to 192 this morning. Jogged a couple miles tonight at a slack pace to try things out. Was remarkably limber while stretching, but the joints were all crackly (unsurprising). Will try for a full run tomorrow, I think.
The big news around the area is the weather. It looks like on Tuesday we received about a quarter inch of ice, then about 3 inches of heavy, wet snow, then another good half inch of ice on top of it. This made scraping the car a chore on Wednesday. Would have been worse today, though! And then there's the fun of watching southerners trying to handle the conditions...
On Wednesday I watched one couple trying to get out of their garage while the snow was still wet and sticky. The car bottomed out and got stuck. Rather than shovel out the snow (with a shovel, or by hand), the husband actually fetched a 2x4 and tried to pry the car off the mound! I just shook my head and drove away. If I had offered to help, I think I would have come off as condescending.
Then there was this morning. Overnight, the slushy snow froze solid, leaving lodged ice flows all over the place. The plow drift is as firm as curbing, to be frank. Vehicles were getting stuck all over. I saw two guys trying to dig out a car w/ SC plates on it. One of the guys had a can of deicer and was spraying it on the ground behind the rear tires. It was clearly a FWD car. Too funny!
Over lunch, one of the consultants, who's in from Chicago this week, was chuckling about the crazy people who drive 10mph under the speed limit on completely dry pavement. My thought, as always, is "if you're too scared to drive, then get off the road and call a cab or take the bus." Of course, even the buses were shutdown on Wednesday. What a nutty region!
Speaking of shutdown -- Hanna's now off from school Friday for the 3rd consecutive day. In fact, almost every county in the area, except the smaller ones of Arlington and Alexandria, are closed again tomorrow. Now, in their defense, side streets are still a disaster, and as mentioned above, the snow is now frozen solid, meaning it's not going anywhere. To make matters worse, we're still not expected to get above freezing until next week.
Hanna said today that it's too bad I was so sick this past week because with the storm we could have probably taken a couple extra days off and headed north to ski in NY for the long Presidents' Day holiday. :) She has bad cabin fever, so we need to go do something. My plan for last weekend had been to figure that out, but obviously I was otherwise detained.
Incidentally, she concurred this evening that she doesn't ever recall my being as sick as I was Saturday. It was almost kind of scary. I imagine myself being a pale shade of green for a good 36-hour period. *shudder* Even now it brings back nightmares! Ah, well, fading into the past now...
