Let it snow...

Ah. Christmas is done and we now have the rest of the week to kick back and relax in the detritus of the festivities. We have had a very enjoyable holiday, with great gifts all around. Gray got me a beautiful red lambskin jacket. Grayson and I surprised him with Guitar Hero III, and Grayson got tons of Pokemon toys and a giant Gigaball that he can climb into and roll around in.




Yesterday we had a beautiful snow in the morning: big wet flakes fell all morning, enough to truly cover the ground, and it was perfect snow for packing and snowballing. Grayson and I went out and had a snowball fight with some kids from down the block, including Grayson's latest favorite person in the world, Sam Powell. Sam is in 4th grade, and Grayson goes to SPARK, the afterschool program, with him. Sam hung the moon, let me tell you. He is a big Pokemon freak, like Grayson, and Grayson gets positively giddy whenever Sam comes around. Sam seems to enjoy Grayson's company, as well, which is a little surprising, considering the difference in their ages and the fact that Grayson is a little bit of a goober around Sam. Sam seems to take it with aplomb, however. I guess it's good to be worshiped. Plus, Grayson gives Sam another one of his toys every time they play together.

Anyway, the snow was perfect: beautiful, adequate for snowballs, and then gone by the afternoon. This makes three snowfalls this winter already -- very unusual for Oklahoma. We're expecting another possible snowfall tonight.

Solstice

A merry Yule. Last night we lit our solstice candle and let it carry the light through the longest night of the year. I like celebrating the solstice because it reminds me that, in fact, from here on through the long cold winter, the days are getting just a little longer and the nights a little shorter with each passing day. No matter how cold and dark it seems, Spring is coming.

And it is cold and dark today. Yesterday it was 60 degrees. Today... Brrrrrr. Cold, gray and windy. We're expecting snow, though I don't expect it to stick.

The city is in recovery from the ice storms. Huge piles of cut-up branches line the streets. I saw a picture in the paper of a stack of limbs with a sign on it that said "Free Trees: some assembly required." The power is at last back on to almost everybody, though I understand there are a few people whose wires are down still.

One of the curators at the museum just got power on Tuesday. That made it ten days for him. Yikes. We were really remarkably lucky.

This week I mailed off all the gifts that required mailing. I got gifts for all the cousins and kids of friends we'll be seeing over the holidays. I have all the presents for Grayson and Gray. I'm nearly done.

We have not sent cards out, but Gray and I agreed that we would just admit to ourselves that we're not good at getting Christmas cards out in a timely fashion, so we'll call them New Years cards and get them out next week.

Friday was a day of dancing in the halls at the museum. My part-time student assistant, Krysten, who graduated last Saturday, agreed to become my full-time colleague, which means that I am now no longer a department of one, but part of a two-person team. She will do the marketing and I will do the public relations and all will be right with the world. She's thrilled to get to stay at the museum. I'm thrilled to have a full-time "assistant," (though really she won't be my assistant so much as the other half of the department) and the museum staff is thrilled to keep her on for her various skills and cheerful attitude. So we were all doing the "Krysten Dance."

When she came on board as my half-time assistant, I hardly knew what to give her to do. It took me months to be able to let go of things enough to let her actually be a help to me. Now I don't know what I'd do without her. I suspect that we'll now go through a similar transition, with me figuring out how to A) let go of another 20 hours worth of work a week and B) Embark on new PR projects to fill the gap left by doing so. It is certain that the new year will bring about some interesting changes and challenges that I look forward to.

So Merry Yule. Celebrate the return of the sun, and remember that Spring is always just ahead.

I am the All-Knowing Mystery Woman

Today I got to do the filming for Frontier Country. They have framed their '08 holiday show as a reality show / competition. Three "contestants" (they were adults, not kids, after all) are visiting several central OK attractions and take part in various activities. At the end they will be quizzed on their experiences and one will win some fabulous prize. My role was as the Mystery Host whom they meet up with at the OKC Memorial, and who gives them the clue to their first "destination."

I got to be very cool and mysterious. It was fun and kind of silly. I will also do the voice over for the show and one final scene in which I congratulate the winner at the end. It will be filmed in advance and I will seem to mysteriously appear on the JumboTron in the Bricktown ballpark for the final scene, like I'm being linked in by satelite or something. Too bad I have to wait a year to see the results. Should be very humorous.

Thanks to Emily at F.C. for the photo. Don't I look like a pro? Just ignore how big my butt looks...

Back to School

What a Monday.
Yesterday afternoon, Grayson's afterschool program, SPARK, called to tell us that his school would be closed AGAIN on Monday, but they would be open all day if we needed to drop him off. I made arrangements to leave him with my folks again and told him the deal. (He was, needless to say, thrilled at the prospect of a SIXTH day out of school)

Then at 10 last night my mom calls me to tell me she had just seen on the news that all Oklahoma City schools would be open on Monday.

Open?
Closed?
WTF?

So we went online and yes, ALL schools were open. So we broke the news to G-rex (who was still awake, though we had put him to bed nearly an hour before) and reminded him we'd have to get up early to get him to school.

This morning... 8:30 a.m.
I wake up to two sleeping boys. Shit! I have a staff meeting in Norman in half an hour, and Grayson is already half an hour late to school!

So we had a rather harried morning.
Ah, Monday.

I got a call today from Frontier Country Marketing, asking me to host their holiday TV show this year. They need someone to do the segment segues and voice over. Apparently it's a sort of holiday reality show where they took a bunch of kids to various attractions and filmed them doing stuff there, and I'm going to do the set-up bits in-between segments. Should be very fun to do. It will be my first non-museum television gig. I'm now a much-sought-after star.

Probably because they knew I would work for free.
Ho Ho Ho.

snow what

Well, the big snow storm was a bit of a dud.

Oh, it did snow: and the wind blew and it got colder than hell. But the snow didn't accumulate to speak of. It covered the lawn enough to look pretty, and that's it. Oh well, it's not like we needed any more weather complications to add to our weather complications. I'm a bit embarrassed, however, that OU cancelled the convocation ceremonies for winter graduates that were scheduled for Saturday. A lot of disappointed families over that.

I'm starting to get all excited about Christmas. I bought my last present for Grayson yesterday, and now I have only a few gifts left to purchase, and a few I'm waiting for that should arrive by Tuesday. Our tree is all piled up with presents! It's exciting to have Christmas at home. I have a bunch of stuff that needs to be shipped off next week.

Today my grandmother Sybil is coming to make Martha Washingtons with us. It has become an annual event that we all look forward to.

Monday is the big feast at the museum for all the staff and volunteers. I forgot to sign up to bring a dish, but I'll come up with something. This last week of work is always so half-assed. Everyone wants to be out doing their last-minute shopping and is looking forward to the time off. Everyone is sort of futzing around. For me, it's a very slow time because there is nothing going on at the museum now until late January, so I don't have anything in particular to promote. Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of projects I could create for myself that probably really need to get done....

Grayson spent the night with a friend last night, so it's unusually quiet here this morning. I was looking forward to sleeping in, with no kid jumping on me and pestering me to go play. But I woke up when Gray came to bed some time in the wee hours and I had trouble staying asleep after that. So I'm awake early on a day when for once I have the chance to be asleep. Oh cruel ironies of life.

Trees in Norman

Here are a few shots of some of the tree damage in Norman. You can click on an image to see a larger version. Pretty bad, huh?

More on the way...

I had a rather eerie drive last night on the way home. As I drove up the broadway extension through Oklahoma City I realized I couldn't see downtown. There were a few streetlights on, and the big floodlights were on (oddly) over the Bricktown ballpark. But the highrises were all dark. Always over the holidays, the two tallest buildings downtown have big white crosses lit up on their sides, but there was nothing. All of downtown seemed not to exist. A thick blanket of fog added to the creepiness of it.

On a more cheerful note, however, Byron's Liquor Warehouse was back up and running yesterday evening on 23rd street, and the traffic signals were back up, though only blinking red. So there's progress. I mean, where there's a liquor store, there's civilization.

Other good news: the electrician is at our house this morning, reattaching our meter to the wall and getting the power lines up off the ground. OG&E has set up meter drops in parking lots around the metro where electricians can come to pick up new meter boxes for folks. They have them piled up in flats of boxes and they're handing them out like water off the back of the FEMA truck. Our electrician said we were (as we already knew) incredibly lucky to still have power, considering the state of our lines.

And there's more weather on the way. It's pea soup out there this morning, with fog freezing on the trees, and the freezing rain and snow are due some time in the afternoon. They say it won't be anything like what we had, but could really add a new layer of misery to the situation, and of course slow down the power line repairs. I have seen several instances of house fires caused by electrical problems, and a fancy hotel at the Waterford plaza caught fire last night due to electrical shorts, right after Rudy Giuliani's big fundraiser, I guess.

The Oklahoma City superintendent says he doesn't know when schools will reopen. The gym roof on a middle school in Norman collapsed yesterday under the weight of the ice. My folks are keeping Grayson again today. He's very excited about helping Papa Phil clean up the downed trees in their yard today. I guess the thing about boys and power tools starts early. He was jazzed about the prospect of the chain saw.

Here are some pics of the trees in their neighborhood. They lost their beautiful river birch in the front, and an entire Japanese black pine in the back. The other picture is of the flattened pear tree in their neighbor's yard across the street. Those ornamental pear trees just got decimated, everywhere.

The Oklahoman has a nice gallery of storm shots, if you're interested. Go to www.newsok.com and click on Photos. You can choose the "Ice Storm" gallery and look through a bunch of them. I'm going to post some more here after I go out and shoot some in the old neighborhoods in Norman at lunch.

A Tree Holocaust

The city looks like a war zone. Limbs are piled on every street, in every lawn. The tops of trees still standing are broken and splintered, with limbs hanging. Whole trees sprawl, split down the middle and collapsed in every direction.

Everyone is talking about the power outage. "Do you have power?" is the first question you ask or are asked when you meet anyone. The schools are closed through the end of the week, and whole neighborhoods are still dark. You can see the progress of OG&E's doughty repair crews as the traffic lights come on block by block with each passing day, and as businesses come back to life as power is restored in a slow wave across the city.

On the positive side, the outage has once again given Oklahoma a chance to showcase its good people and resilient spirit. The whole state is getting a crash course in four-way-stop etiquette. Busy intersections were previously cut-throat drivers pushed aggressively through yellow lights are now slow, friendly meetings of drivers who meet each other's eyes, wave one another through, nod or raise a hand politely. I hear fewer horns, though everyone is obliged to take longer at each darkened intersection.

Neighbors meet in the front yard as we survey the damage and make mutual offers of assistance in clean-up. This one has a chain-saw, that one has a limb-lopper, a ladder, a pick-up truck. Our neighbor was up early one morning and moved two huge limbs out of our driveway for us before he left for work. Gray was out on Sunday pulling ice-encrusted leaves off sapling trees at the house on the corner to take the weight off of them and keep their trunks from snapping. Later the man who lives there dropped by to thank him.

Our power remains on, though with the lines lying on the ground under a tree limb, that could change at any time. Today Gray said he'll make the call to an electrician friend and ask him to get us on his schedule for putting the electrical meter back on the wall.

Gray and I have not begun any clean-up efforts. There is still a lot of ice and mud, and we had hoped to start the clean-up over the weekend, but now that looks a bit doubtful. Today is supposed to be relatively warm, but this weekend the forecast calls for more rain and then snow, so there's no telling when we'll be able to get out there and work on it.

Ice is still melting on the roof of my car, and when I drive down the highway sometimes big sheets of it fly off the top and crash onto the highway behind me. I feel bad about endangering others, but I'll say this for it...it does discourage tail-gaters.

Gray is home with Grayson today, who, on top of being out of school for the weather, is now coming down with a cold. I feel like we've had a full winter of illness and weather already and it's not even Christmas! We don't normally get anything like this until January.

Later today I'll go get some photographs of the downed trees.

Ice Storm

The word for the week is ICE.
We had an ice storm of epic proportions this weekend, that shut off power to some 400,000 people and has caused a tree holocaust all over the state. Our own neighborhood has suffered huge losses in trees and limbs.

The ice started on Saturday morning, and continued in the form of sleet or freezing rain through Sunday. On Sunday morning we woke to find that half of our pear tree in the back yard had sheared off and dropped over our power and cable lines, miraculously leaving them intact. The power meter box had peeled away from the house and was leaning over, but the lines are still attached. We haven't lost power, or even cable and internet, while houses and whole neighborhood all around us are cut off.

Over the course of Sunday, we lost a big chunk of the live oak in the front yard, as well.

Needless to say, school was out yesterday, and again today. Grayson's in heaven. I'm going a bit nuts. It's raining today and a lot of the city is still without power, so it's not like we've got anywhere to go.

Grayson has made a new friend down the street. His name is Sam, which seems to be the name of about a third of the boys in his elementary school. He's three years older than Grayson, but about his size, and they are both obsessed with Pokemon, so they make a good team. I'm hoping, as is Grayson, that we can have Sam over this afternoon. Sam's power is off. A big limb fell through their power lines. A limb also fell on their car. We're lucky not to have suffered the same fate, with our cars parked out in plain view.

I went out yesterday to buy wine (hey, I have my priorities), and had to peel about an inch-thick sheet of ice off my car in order to do so. I'll say this for it, it is beautiful. Check out this groovy ice sculpture it made of our bushes out front. And the lovely ice-coated little tree. I'm surprised some of these smaller trees can stand up under the weight. It's the trees that still have leaves on them that have gotten the worst of it, though. All the extra weight.

The rain seems to be clearing some of the ice, but we will have major clean-up to do once things dry out a bit.