I have left my car in the driveway for a few days. It is now too encapusalted for me to dig out. I am building up the layers of ice like a jawbreaker. We might get some warmer temps today, and I can hope for a thaw.

I want pictures! Ice storms never cease to amaze me.

It's dark and rainy here in Times Square, which keeps the crowds down a bit but forces everyone to huddle and bustle under the overhangs. Waking up was hard to do this morning, but work and free coffee have me on a pretty even keel right now. It's relatively warm out, which is a plus, but my umbrella broke when I folded it to come inside, so I hope the rain lets up by quitting time.

Ice storms are neat but super dangerous. Kinda like tornados or chapparal wildfire.

**Shakes fist at ice**

So, here's my ice story. We had our ice storm a while ago, and it is just now starting to thaw. We have a sump pump in the basement. It was running all the time. Now, I'm a first-time home owner, and I'm about as handy as a screen door on a submarine, but I knew this wasn't good. I don't know how sump pumps work. I don't know where the pumped water goes. Nothing. But I figure I had better go outside and poke around and see what's up. The first sign of trouble was the large pools of water around my downspouts. As I was standing there, staring at the pools, a big whoosh of water comes up the downspout and floods the lawn. 'This can't possibly be a good thing,' I think to myself. Not really knowing what to do, I went back in the house. Then my stepson tells me that one time when he was out playing in the snow, he saw water draining into the street from a pipe. Aha! A clue. Drawing on my 'Blues Clues' knowledge about clues, I go out to the curb to look for the pipe. Turns out the pipe is completely blocked up with ice. The next hour was spent pouring hot water on the ice and stabbing it with a poker from a fireplace tool set. Meanwhile, my wife calls her parents to see if they have any advice. They say to use a hair dryer. Not really helpful. I have visions of the whole pipe solidly jammed up with ice, but keep stabbing at it anyway. After some scraped knuckles and about 10 buckets of hot water, the ice finally broke through. The sump pump is much happier, and I'm much happier. (But the only ice I want to see is floating in my drink).

Sorry about the long boring ice story.

I would take pictures if I had a digital camera. Alas, I am still living in the last century with respect to photographic technology.

It is now snowing/raining, or slushing as I call it, and I am trying to decide if I should wait a little longer before venturing outside. Apt = warm and dry. Outside = wet, icy and cold.

There was no power in my 'hood when I woke up this morning. I got all ready for work and it didn't occur to me until I was getting ready to leave that I wouldn't be able to open the garage to get to my car. My brother's car was parked on the driveway covered in a layer of ice that was maybe 1cm thick.

Why didn't I try to open it manually, you ask? I couldn't get into our garage through the side door because my mother's misplaced the key, and it's blocked by sheets of wood left over from our renovations anyway so I had to schlep to the bus stop in the wet and ice to get to work.

I don't like taking the bus because it's inconvenient to do so from where I live - that's why I drive. And not having a car today totally screws up my plans for tonight. Grrr.

In ice storms, having your car encapsulated is a subtle hint.

No, it's a blatant hint.

The scary thing about ice is the way it drops things, like trees and power poles. 1cm of ice doesn't do too much damage, but earlier in the season, large parts of Nebraska got 2 inches of ice, and the number of steel power line towers that dropped was scary.

BE SAFE, WOMAN!

Blatant hint that I need to clear ice and snow at least everyday from the car, even if I'm not using it? Yeah. It thawed out nicely today though. Yeah! Procrastination reigns supreme again!

Ice storms can be so beautiful, though. When we had ours not too long ago, I was amazed the next day by the beauty of the trees. Everything, and I mean everything, looked like chandeliers.

On my way to the lab I kept getting hit by the ice falling from the tree branches. Thankfully there wasn't much to begin with. It's almost all gone now and we're just left with oodles of water and slush on the roads.