To love it or hate it

Snow! I love watching it fall. I love taking pictures of snow-covered scenes. I even enjoy playing in it. However, this weekend it made my life a little less pleasant.

In reality, I should channel my anger toward the Senate. If it weren't for the Senate, I would have spent this weekend admiring the snow falling out my window, sipping hot chocolate, baking and watching movies.

Because of the Senate, I spent my Saturday inside — but editing stories — and I spent my Sunday trudging through snow from bus to metro to the office. All so I could send the last few pages of our publication to the printer.

Did I mention the trudging took two hours in each direction? And that I managed to step into icy puddles both coming and going? And that I was supposed to be editing stories through all of this (but my kind co-workers who were supposed to be free all weekend helped me out)?

Perhaps this is where I mention that I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. Friday to edit a story on the early morning Senate vote, AND I'm staying up again tonight to edit a story on a vote planned for about 1 a.m. Monday.

My mistake today appears to be that I thought the easiest way to maneuver would be with public transportation. The portion of the Metro near me was closed (because it's above-ground), so I decided to take a bus to the part of the Metro that was running (underground) to get to the office. It seemed like a fool-proof plan. I thought it might take an hour because of poor road conditions. It took two.

The return trip was similarly horrible (though this time I anticipated how bad it would be), but I didn't seem to have many options. An added bonus was when I checked the Metro site on my phone while I was on the Metro headed to a bus stop and found an alert saying all buses had stopped running. I panicked, seeing as I was about to end up in an area I wasn't too familiar with, in the cold and snow, after dark and carrying my company laptop. I waited it out to discover that apparently my Metro bus line was still running, despite what Metro said of its own buses.

Before I left the house in the morning, my other option was digging my car out from 16 inches to 23 inches of snow. Note that I would have had to do this with my hands, since I don't have a shovel. And then, of course, I would have had to drive in my small Honda Civic. It's not exactly the world's best snow car. (And some roads still haven't been plowed at all.) I even looked into cab options, but that was going to be either impossible to get or ridiculously expensive.

But despite all of that, I really like my job. (In addition, I should mention that our office decided to officially close for tomorrow. So, I get a snow day — though I have to edit a bit from home still.)

Now, I'm hoping all the stranded travelers at Reagan National Airport get home before I brave the crowds Tuesday!