Welcome Back, Winter Wonderland!

When: January 30-31, 2010 Where: Hampton Roads, Virginia First off, if you want the full effect of this blog, you need to have your volume on. I have put one and only one song on my playlist that I think best compliments this post. Sidenote: the song is written by the Twin Cities own Adam Young ("Owl City"). He probably knows a thing or two about winter and snow so it's fitting that the song is authored by someone who can relate to this post. I'm completely caught up in his music right now, which he explains is influenced by "God, G-rated movies, optimism, and the Postal Service (the musical group and federal agency)", all wrapped together in electropop beats, utopian titles, and riddled with the most unusual lyrics. In short, it's kind of what I imagine my music would be like if I were a musician. He was actually supposed to perform in Norfolk yesterday but had to postpone the show to another date because of the snowstorm. But back to the topic. Snow. Virginia is no stranger to snow (especially in the mountains) and this winter has been no different. Until yesterday. Unlike the rest of Virginia and even areas south of the state, Hampton Roads IS a stranger to snow. Lying in extreme southeastern Virginia and nearly surrounded by large water bodies, snow is not what you'd call common around the metro area. Even this past December, when northern parts of Virginia saw over 20 inches of snow, we here in Virginia Beach saw zero. Which was a good thing because we were flying out that day to go home for Christmas! This weekend was going to be different. As of late Friday, the National Weather Service "confidently expected" at least 5 inches of snow to fall across the region. It was supposed to start around midnight Saturday morning and you know I stayed up to see it start. But by 12:15 there was still no snow to be seen so I slipped in to bed with my wife who had been asleep for over an hour and could have cared less about the pending snowstorm. I awoke at 6:30 (which is sleeping in for a dysfunctional body which usually lies wide awake come 4 a.m. every day of the week) and crept excitedly to the blinds with my camera. SNOW!! Already 4+ inches had fell and I caught a couple snapshots before heading back to bed. It snowed the rest of the day and even into last night, mixed with some freezing rain yesterday afternoon. I have yet to hear official reports but I believe most areas saw between 5-8". Between Greenville (where we used to live) and Raleigh, NC, some areas had over 16 inches of snow! This weekend was really our first snowfall since moving from Iowa. It snowed 5 inches last January in Greenville but Stace & I were in Virginia (of all places), which didn't get any snow.

Saturday7 a.m.

1 p.m.

Today is beautiful, with open blue skies, snow-covered pines (and palms), and icicles hanging from roofs. For a city that is ill-equipped to deal with any amount of snow, it was no surprise that half of the city is shut down. Nearly every church service was cancelled this morning; ours included. So, I assumed the task of driving to McDonald's to get Stace and I one of our favorite breakfasts: sausage, egg & cheese McMuffins! I first had to walk around our complex (in my PJ's and shoes NOT meant for snow) taking pictures like a kid that never sees snow. I should state that I was NOT happy about this snowstorm but since it was here and I couldn't do anything about it I chose to embrace it and enjoy its beauty. After several pictures, I was then tasked with getting our car out of the drifts and unfrozen from the parking lot that was covered in 2 inches of ice. The "warm" temperatures yesterday (around 32) and gusty winds (over 40mph) made a mess of what snow did fall and made it worse than it otherwise would have been.

Our buried Camry.

"Plowed" streets (not so much).

I'm becoming immune to the effects of seeing palm trees covered in snow.

This is the progression of snowfall across the southern half of the country over the past 4 days.

January 28

January 29

January 30

January 31

Sadly, two Sundays ago it was 68° here, last Sunday it was 67° and today the high is supposed to be in the upper 20's! If that high holds true, it will be the first time this winter the high temperature has been below 30 in Virginia Beach. The low tonight may drop in to the teens which would also be the first time it's dropped below 20 this winter. I can only imagine the disgust of my families, hearing me complain about our "cold winter". But for those times we're asked, "When are you moving back to the Midwest?" my answer is, "When it stops snowing in Minnesota during winter!" because this weekend has reminded me just how much I HATE winters in Iowa/Minnesota (and in general)! Summer can't come soon enough!!

September 15, 2009

January 31, 2010

Everything Happens In Time and Space.

When: 2010 Where: The World Wide Web Tick-tock. Tick-tock. It's time! Time for me to join in on another digital fad. Time to upload my thoughts and experiences onto some server in a high-security vault in the Sierra Nevada. Time to rethink my schedule to allot time for 'blogging' while still having time to pay the bills, practice personal hygiene, and honor my vows of "...til death do us part". Time to spend every other memory thinking "how can I pigeon-hole that in to a blog post?" It's time! Webster's dictionary defines time as "a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future". OK. Since you put it that way. To fill that "nonspatial" void, enter 'space'. I won't even begin to scribe what that word means to geographers or how many class lectures I heard about how to use its properties to bolster the confidence and validity of a discipline and its practitioners who often feel discredited by others in academia. For that matter, space AND time are the quintessential components of geography and its respective research genres. I suppose that's what drew me to geography in college and why I sought to compose a thesis that oozed space and time; perhaps to the extent that it was the foundation of the research topic. But I'm not here to talk about geography, or school, or Webster's dictionary. I promise that this blog is not, by any means, a philosophical medium. This is the last time you're going to get any philosophy from me. Rather, this blog is a place for me to share those life experiences (personal or not) that all share the common threads of space and time. 'Time' (specifically, dates) has always intrigued me. My dad and (especially) his mom remember dates better than anyone really should and apparently I inherited that gene. I was homeschooled through 2nd grade (I'll give Debby a moment to compose herself before moving on). When I started school in 3rd grade, I memorized the birthdays of every kid in my class (which was only about 25 students) and remember 90% of them to this day (and about half of those within my social spheres since then). But history also fascinates me. Not in the stereotypical sense of the boring history teacher in 6th grade (sorry Mr. Vis), but wondering things like "What did downtown Manhattan look like 900 years ago" or "What did Abe Lincoln's voice sound like" (picture the Gettysburg address) or "How much do I look like my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather" (he was probably my age sometime around 1700). That kind of history interests me; the weird kind. Ironically, my great-great-grandfather's name was Weird (German, pronounced "Veerd"). And then, along came geography and my new affinity for 'space' gave way to the union of the components of this blog. And now you have to hear about it. So prepare yourself, for posts that contain many pictures, videos, maps, and graphs, all centered around my quirky interests and random experiences which all occur in...time and space. The WHEN and WHERE of my life. This is just that awkward, introductory post that explains the title of the blog, what its content will likely be, and why its worth creating - all put together in an incoherent, jumble of words that the author hopes will translate to the reader what is on their mind.