Atlanta Under Glass

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

What I wanted to call this thread was Atlanta Glasse, with one of the cute little french upward accents on the final e, but I have no idea how to code that, and besides that code doesn’t seem to work in thread titles anyway.

SO anyway - Atlanta is currently coated in a sheet of ice, about 1/2 to 1 inch thick, depending. And all I can say is WOOHOO!!!

We had plenty of warning (days) that this storm was coming - so folks had plenty of time to prepare.

I have no business to conduct, it’s Saturday so there are no kids out of school, my car is parked safely on a side street, the heat is on, I’ve got cable and TiVo both, not to mention my emergency french toast and toilet paper. There are flannel sheets on my bed, and I have extra comforters.

Finally this city is feeling like it’s winter! It was 68 friken degrees Monday. Ice is more like it - this is January for frick’s sake!

I hung out with my neighbor on the porch and we watched the crazy people who felt it necessary to drive today. We mercilessly critiqued their driving skills. We let his kitty come out and watched with great amusement as she despised the ice. Then she sat on my lap.

I went for a lovely walk. I slipped an slid but did not fall down. I walked to the town square, and hung out in the Gazebo with some Georgia kids who almost never see frozen water, except in the refrigerator, as they told me. Then I went to Starbucks, the only store open in my little burg, and got a nice Chai Tea to walk home with. My nose and ears got cold, but not my hands or head or feet, because I had gloves, a hat, and boots - because I know how to dress for cold weather! My boots have nice traction soles and are waterproof - which helped on the ice and in the piles of melting slush/ice water.

It’s COLD! And I LIKE it! (but it’s supposed to go away tomorrow, so all the people who are dramatically inconvenienced will be ok then)

And I’m very glad that I don’t have to drive anywhere. Although I took driver’s ed in Chicago in the winter on a lot covered in three inches of ice and I know how to manage, I have zero confidence in anyone else. And black ice respects the skill of no person.

And all of this is tremendously mundane - but I just had to share!

2

My first response was destroyed when I almost dont typing it because the power flicked off and on. It’s been doing that all day.

Macon’s lovely right now, in a deadly slippery sort of way. I love seeing the pine trees encased in ice. Makes lovely photos.

At least it wasn’t as bad as the ice storm in 2000. I grew up in Gwinnett, and our power was out for almost two weeks, because the transformers blew up, and we had no less than four downed trees blocking the neighborhood . We pulled the couch up to the fireplace and camped there for days. Once the streets were cleared, Mom went out and had to pay $60 for one crappy little stack of firewood. Then, an exploding tree fell on my sister’s friend’s Cadillac. It was teh serious suck.

Ya know, all the yankees are going to troop in here and call us pansies, but hey - severe frozen precipitation is way off the norm, here. I enjoy it, actually, as long as I can stay warm, but there are plenty of idiots here that have no idea how to handle themselves and think a little ice is the end of the world. Watching them also lends to my enjoyment of wintry weather.

3

Slight hijack, but hopefully helpful. If you want to type an e with an acute accent, just hold down the ALT key and then 130 on the numeric keypad. For other French accents see here.

4

I believe on a windows keyboard Alt Gr with e works to, é works for me at least.

5

Yeah, why couldn’t we glass over on a day when I do have classes??? Why!? I mean, I’ve got a test and project for Monday. Monday would have been awesome! Keep icing! Keep cold!

Maybe… maybe I’ll get lucky.

6

I ventured out all of two minutes to take a few pictures in the parking lot, but TiVo, NetFlix, naps, and games have been the order of the day.

7

Another slight hijack: it’s glace, not glassé. But pronounced more or less like glass in English. There’s another thread somewhere this week from Colophon with pictures from an ice storm in Geneva, at least along the lake front, that are quite dramatic if anyone wants to do a search.

8

I kept checking to see if I could make it to work yesterday, but it never happened. Power went out around noon, but we have a generator (just can’t do stuff like laundry or use the stove) and plenty of gas (good thing, too… power is still out, and not scheduled to be back on til 6pm tonight), so snuggling with the cats and really bad made-for-the-SciFi-channel movies were my order for the day. Roads were clear when I drove into work this AM, although there are lots of downed or heavily leaning trees.

One of my coworkers asked me how I was planning on making it home Friday night (it started sleeting here at work around 4:30, which told me it’d been going at home for a while)… I told him I’d just have to go slowly and hope the Massachusetts genes kicked back in. :smiley:

The sun is trying valiently to peek through the clouds right now, but I’m not holding out too much hope.