Blizzard!

As you should already know, a massive winter storm has battered a large chunk of the US. The storm reached from Texas to somewhere North of Texas. Canada, let's say. Because Chicago is between Texas and Canada, we also got hit with the storm. It was, according to one source, the third largest winter storm to hit Chicago. Ever.

We got at least 17 inches of snow, with 50+mph winds and--allegedly--25-30 foot waves coming off the lake (I find this hard to believe. The lake is frozen).

This is a photo of what it usually looks like outside of our living room window:
If it were a clearer day, you would be able to see all of downtown.

Here is a picture taken from the same place as the blizzard got started:

And this isn't even the real blizzard. This is just "heavy snow." The actual blizzard hit last night, and raged till 11 this morning.

In the middle of it all, I got a text from my friend Charlie asking if he could sleep at our place. (He always seems to want to come over when I'm making chili.)He had gone outside to have a smoke and locked himself out of his apartment. During a blizzard. He came over and slept on our blow-up bed.

The next day, after the storm stopped, Randi, Charlie, and I trekked to his apartment.

The pictures don't necessarily do it justice, but the snow was pretty deep in most places. Sometimes it looks like the snow is only shin-high, but that's because the snow is so dense that it will support your weight. There were some places where it was obvious that we were walking on top of at least a foot of snow.

Here I am in our parking lot:

This is our street...somewhere:

Oh, so we got to Charlie's apartment on foot, and I got his door open with a gift card from my wallet. Randi was very impressed.

A picture of the lake, frozen:

Randi in her parka:

Oh yeah! U Chicago closed down for the day (tomorrow too!), but Randi had to go to work. Apparently, her boss 1) doesn't care about the well-being of her employees, and 2) thinks that running a full coffee shop crew to serve the exactly 5 customers that would maybe show up is a good business strategy. In other words, she's an idiot.

Randi got up at 5:30am, got dressed, and headed out to begin her long walk to work. (Yes, walk! There's no other way to get there in a blizzard.) She got about half a block away when she realized that walking to work would be physically impossible. So she came home.

Later, she talked to her boss, who said, "Maybe trying to open the store today wasn't such a good idea."

Randi will have to work tomorrow. She will be walking. Wah!