Snowmaggeddon 2010

Hey there - at long last, I am back. I had forgotten the log-in for this blog (I KNOW) and then Blogger said sure, we'll send your password to you at your gmail account, for which I had also forgotten the password (I KNOW. what can I say, this fall was busy) and it was easier to let it go than jump through all the hoops I'd have to in order to figure it out. But I decided to take a break from obsessively monitoring the weather service's predictions for later this week and give logging into this a whirl and voila! I'm in.

Part of the reason why I even tried to log in is that I'm running out of snow-day activities. I worked from home today because the federal government was closed and I figured that they're a good arbiter of whether it's a smart idea to go in. Plus where we live now is a mile from the nearest metro, the buses are only running sporadically, and the idea of hiking through two feet of snow just to sit in my office to do more or less what I could do at home was not an appealing one.

So I've been working, but I've also been home for three days straight. The Texan and I have been keeping busy, but if we get another 18 inches tomorrow on top of the 26 we got over the weekend (OH DEAR GOD WHEN WILL IT STOP), this might change. I already am cursing my shitty Netflix choices. I have a bad habit of putting stuff on Netflix I think I *should* want to watch, as opposed to things I actually *do* want to watch.

There has been some excitement though. I took a picture of our dog in the snow and sent it in to the WashPost's website, since they've been collecting pictures of people's Snowmaggeddon experiences. I figured it was one of roughly 2000 identical shots of dogs in the snow and it would just disappear into cyberspace. So imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and checked the website to see the latest in weather updates only to find our dog on the home page. HA, suck it other dog owners of the DC area, outside validation that my dog IS cuter than your dog! I perhaps have become a little too focused on this. We took a screenshot of it for posterity and I may have sent that around to my office under the pretense of explaining why I was working from home today.

The other excitement around here is one that I could do without. Keep in mind that we live in an old rowhouse - it's maybe 80 years old - and we live in an urban environment. So when we heard rustling in the walls when we first moved in, we figured, ew, probably mice, but what are you going to do? Keep away from our food - which we've hermetically sealed up - and out of my sight and we're golden. However, the balance has changed.

A week or so ago, I was working from home - hey, it was a Friday, I didn't feel like trudging into the office - when the cat, Scratchel, went to sit under my desk and intertwine himself around my legs. Not unusual. If I had a nickel for every time I accidentally kicked that cat, I'd be a, um, thousandaire. What was slightly unusual was that he started batting something around. I looked down to see SWEET JESUS A MOUSE. AND ONE THAT IS NOT ENTIRELY DEAD. I fled the room and insisted that The Texan make it go away. So he did, we let our landlord know about it, and figured that it was a one-time deal. We had an exterminator come out just to cover our bases.

Except that yesterday Scratchel caught not one, not two, but THREE mice. Granted, one of them was stuck on a sticky pad and basically served up to the cat on a platter, but still. Ugh. I think I may have just ensured that no one comes to dinner parties at our house (really, we are clean!). What really amazes me is that the cat is 18.5 years old and has never caught anything in his life. What other skills has he been holding out on us?