Greetings from Weenieville North, in the city of Wussvale, on the planet Whiner. AKA Texas.

Holy crap.

It is moments like today and yesterday when I hate Texas. Even though, growing up in California, I never had to deal with seriously inclement weather, the time I have spent with Zach in New Jersey and Pennsylvania has given me a new appreciation for just how weak we mewling little babies from warmer climes really are. And I am proud that now, I do not count myself among them.

Monday morning, we woke up to iciness. This happened last year too--we have ice storms, which sound as if there would be sharp ice chunks whipping around in gale-force winds, but which are really just, well, mornings when you wake up to iciness. I packed Zoe up into the van to go to her ballet class, which we have been missing terribly, since it has been closed for a THREE WEEK Christmas break, and drive across Austin, only to get there and find it utterly deserted. Instead, we went to a nearby wonderful bakery, had cinnamon buns and came home, where Zoe wore her new ballet clothes (thanks, Aunt Mary!) and danced to some thoroughly un-balletic music.

No so bad, yet.

Tuesday morning, we wake up to find that the iciness has grown thicker. Zach stays home from work, and toward the middle of the day, it actually snows. We all pile into the neighbor's car with her two kids and go to the local park where there is a hill and sled down in on a big piece of cardboard. Fun is had by all, except me when I find that the first day of my medical terminology class, which was scheduled to begin at 6:30 last evening, isn't going to happen, because all of the ACC campuses are closed. No mail delivery. No garbage pickup. Schools are closed. Many businesses are closed. Because it is icy. I am piiiiiiiiissed.

Wednesday morning, the ice wass thicker still, Zoe's school was still closed, so she was home today, and ACC was still closed as well, and that night was supposed to be the first day of my anatomy/physiology classes.

I find the whole phenomenon sort of flabbergasting. It's ICE. JUST ICE. It strikes me that if everyone simply drives slowly, we wouldn't have to shut down the entire metropolitan area. Zach laughs, because I'm beside myself, desperate to go to school. You know, I went grocery shopping on Wednesday morning, and while I was at the grocery store, I noticed that somehow, OTHER PEOPLE had also MADE IT OUT OF THEIR HOUSES AND INTO (GASP!) SOMEWHERE ELSE, ALL WITHOUT DYING! With ice on the ground! Jesus wept! How did we do that?! I noticed that Cletis and Juan made it to Taco Cabana to serve burritos, but was there a SINGLE government office open? Nope. Frijoles, YES! Mail, NO! Stupid Texans.

Naturally, I took photos, because for all my bitching, I thought it was pretty.

On to other things. That damn ice has finally melted and the world has slowly emerged from hibernation, with the newscasters constantly recapping things, calling it "The Deadly Ice Storm." Gaaah. In my humble Christian opinion, if you died because you were driving like an imbecile on icy roads, you deserved it. No offense to other Christians, or other (smarter) imbeciles.

Let me tell you what our library smells like. (For those of you who haven't been to our house, I mean the library in the house, not the public library. Because if the public library smelled like this, the city would probably burn it down.) It smells as if Paul Bunyon's ox, Babe, brought his pet giant dog (Big Wiener Pete) into our library to relieve himself after a drinking binge. Then he asked Paul to get into the action, too. My eyebrows have long since singed off, and my eyes water as I write this. Moe, obviously ticked off by our leaving him with a dogsitter for two weeks, apparently used all 350-ish square feet of the room to pee. And pee and pee and pee. We rented a steam cleaner which did little more than wet down and intensify the smell. We then bit the bullet and hired a professional to come in. However, our appointment was for Wednesday morning, and nobody showed up. You know, BECAUSE IT WAS COLD! They did have the courtesy to call three hours after they were supposed to show up to reschedule, but I wasn't home and have had my panties in too big of a rumple about the overblown reaction to local weather to call them back. THAT'll show them! I'm calling on Monday.

We discovered the other day that our fireplace does actually give off warmth! See, it's a gas fireplace, with fake logs. Previously, we had fake logs at our duplex in Folsom, and when we turned it on, it gave off some heat if you actually got INTO it. So I just figured the one we have now was the same. Not so! After living here 2 and a half years, we turned it on the other day, and there was actual heat coming into the house! I was so excited! Then, five minutes later, our smoke alarms went off, and I had to turn it off. Normally, I would have just disabled the alarms, but we have an alarm in almost every room. Wait, let me think. . . I think we have 7 in the house--none in the bathrooms. And the thing is that they're all linked together somehow, so they ALL go off at the same time, and you have to disable ALL of them. One of them is in our entry, about 20 feet off the ground. Unless I shoot it (with accuracy) I won't be able to disable it. So what did I do? Opened the front door and prepared to pack Zoe and Moe into the car and go to a motel. I'm not kidding. I was so ready to just avoid the whole thing that I was willing to let it scream all day until Zach go home to deal with it. Then it turned off.

Not much else is going on in our world, right now. I'll try again next week to get to school. Did I mention I get to dissect a cat? I have already decided I'll be naming my kitty cadaver Fuzzy, because I suspect he won't be. Fuzzy. Got an A in my last class, by the way. I'm awesome.