Insomnia and the storm that was

I can't sleep at the moment, so I've decided to try and fatigue myself with an overdue blog entry. I'm not holding out great hopes. But at least I will be a good blogger and get something new in before or at the one-week-since-last-post deadline I unofficially hold for myself

It has been a while since my last post. Has anything of import happened in Newfoundland since then? Hmm, let me think .... Yes, yes, I do seem to remember a giant motherfucker of a storm. Only vaguely, though. I seem to remember glancing out my window into my parking lot and seeing something like this:


And that's after the plough came through. The second time

Yes, as you might have noticed if you watched the national news for more than a nanosecond the last few days, we got hit with one of those storms I'd like to say we get once or twice a winter here -- if it weren't for the fact that we get them a few more times than once or twice. Say, three or four or twelve times.

And poor Kristen seems to have a talent for visiting me just in time to experience them. Last February she came, and had her flight cancelled because of a comparable storm. All in all, we discovered, not such a bad thing! She ended up staying for an extra two days. So when we woke up on tuesday morning to an ongoing blizzard, we were quite delighted ... until we realized that Air Canada was being a bit cagy and not cancelling her flight, only delaying it by degrees. It was supposed to have left by one in the afternoon ... and then two, and then two-thirty, and the four ... so instead of a lovely extra day of visiting, we were left checking the A/C website every fifteen minutes in the hope that the flight was cancelled. Which it wasn't. Arrgh.

That on top of the fact that we'd had to cancel our dinner reservations the evening before because of the storm. That of course didn't stop us from putting a pizza delivery person through the agony of driving through the snow. Gotta love the gumption of the Giovanni Cabot's people. They're the like the Post Office, only tastier.

Anyway, Kristen made it out yesterday (Tuesday), though her flight was delayed four hours. And driving her to the airport was entertaining, to say the least -- both for the occasional terror of the road conditions, and the perennial amazement I have in watching this city dig out from these storms. I wish I'd had my camera on hand to document the anthill-like activity. Everyone will have to be satisfied instead with some pics I snapped on campus this afternoon:



And downtown: