Snowpocalypse, Houston Style

So. I experienced my first Houston winter storm late last week. I will tell you, it is a sight to behold.

Wednesday: 
The temperature dropped low enough that we actually turned on our heater for the first time this year. Unfortunately, so did the six million other area residents. The city implemented planned rotating blackouts to deal with the additional load. My workplace had four before lunch. Makes it hard to get any work done. I left at lunch and worked from home for the rest of the day. I had to deal with a few distractions, but it was pretty awesome.


Cute.

 

Still cute.



Okay Boom, not so cute anymore.

Thursday:
Highs in the 30's and 1-3" of snow forecasted for overnight. Schools and most businesses dismissed everybody as soon as they heard the word snow. Any and all plans for Thursday night were cancelled and grocery stores were packed with people stocking up. (Note that, although Friday had a relatively bad forecast, the high for Saturday was 60 deg. We're not going to spend a week digging out of this 1" of snow.)

Thursday is my TV night: Community, Big Bang, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's, Private Practice, Jersey Shore. Heaven on DVR. They spent all night interrupting good TV to show us a clear radar and assure us that the storm of the century was just around the corner. Work Friday was cancelled around 9 pm. We finally started seeing some precipitation around midnight. No snow, but light freezing rain.

Friday:

I woke up and ran to the window like I was 10 years old... Not a single snowflake. (These people aren't as savvy as OK weathermen; they literally promised we would have min 1-3" of snow by morning.)

As you can see (if you squint really hard), we do have about a quarter inch of ice. School in Oklahoma would not have been cancelled, but it's like people down here have lost their minds!! All of the national morning shows were cancelled and local news stations covered the weather nonstop. All tollways and most highways were closed, some until Saturday. While I will acknowledge that we have a ton of elevated roadways that can be really hazardous, people here are crazy. They have no concept of black ice; if it looks clear, they're going 70 mph. Police had trouble because drivers were moving unmanned blockades so that they can still take closed highways! So. It turns out that they release schools when they hear the word snow because, when drivers hear the word ice, they crash their cars into the closest object they can find. You don't stay home because of the weather. You stay home because of the crazies. 

We had a great day though. It's amazing how much work you can get done when you're home and nobody is bugging you. (Oh, and that afternoon nap was pretty awesome too.) John and I braved the completely dry (and empty) roads to go to the grocery store. We had a fantastic surf & turf dinner to cap off our snow day.

Boom Kitty likes surf & turf too.

Sunday:

Had to turn the A/C back on. Whew. Glad we survived that one.

Everybody Stay warm!

Linds 

Wear Red This Friday, Feb 4!

This Friday, Feb 4^th, is National Wear Red Day to raise awareness for woman’s heart disease.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one health risk for women in the United States, killing nearly one in three women (compared to a one in eight risk of developing breast cancer).

This is a cause that I have always deeply identified with. My grandmother (and namesake) Charlotte died of a heart attack more than 45 years ago, and my grammy has survived two, not to mention so many of my loved ones that are on cholesterol and/or blood pressure medication. I wear red to honor them and the countless others that have succumbed to, survived, or been affected by heart disease.

We should all be aware of the risk factors and the symptoms of heart disease.

Risk Factors:

While we can’t control all risk factors (age, gender, heredity), there are many that we can. These include cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, obesity, stress, diet and more.

Signs of a Heart Attack:

Some heart attacks are sudden and intense, leaving no doubt about what is happening, but most start slowly with only mild pain and discomfort. All too many people wait too long to seek help. If you or someone you are with encounters chest discomfort, especially with any of these additional signs, call 911 immediately.

-          Chest discomfort. Any chest pain, pressure, or squeezing feeling that lasts more than a few minutes or is recurring.

-          Discomfort in other areas of the upper body. Including one or both arms, back, neck, jaw or stomach.

-          Shortness of breath. Can occur with or without chest pain.

-          Other discomfort. May include a cold sweat, nausea, or lightheadedness.

-          While chest pain is the most common symptom in both women and men, women are more likely to experience supplemental symptoms as well.

Signs of a Stroke:

Any delay in treatment of a stroke can quickly lead to irreversible brain damage. Immediate action is paramount.  Stroke warning signs include one or more of these symptoms. Call 911 immediately if any one or more of these symptoms last more than a couple minutes.

-          Sudden numbness in face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body.

-          Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding.

-          Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes.

-          Sudden trouble walking, dizziness and loss of balance or coordination.

-          Sudden severe headache with no known cause.

-          Note when symptoms first appear. A clot-busting drug can often reduce long-term disability if administered within three hours of the start of symptoms.

Please wear red this Friday to honor your loved ones, and speak to those around you to raise awareness of this awful disease.

All of the above information and more can be found at www.goredforwomen.org

<3 Stay Healthy <3,

Linds

A Workout Room and Nothing More

So we have a pretty huge house (which was mostly a byproduct of the huge yard that we absolutely fell in love with). It has four bedrooms, and we really only had plans for three - the master, the guest, and the study.

I painted and decorated all of the other rooms, but left the fourth bedroom as my "staging room" for close to six months.

We were pretty sure we wanted a workout/sports room, but it just didn’t seem like a priority... Until one of our friends got pregnant. Others talked about how they all knew it was only a matter of time because our now pregnant friends had insisted on leaving one room as an undecorated storage room for close to a year, with the secret hope of being able to paint it for a new baby.  

The next weekend, I painted our pink room gray.

(Boomer, my baby for the time being, looooooooves the camera.) 

I have plans to put a couple of John’s cityscape pictures on one wall, the snowboard on another, possibly get a treadmill, and remove Daisy’s Foofbag, but I feel like the gray itself conveys the message. I’ll get to the rest eventually… I just didn’t want anybody talking or starting any premature rumors yet :-)

Enjoy today,

Linds

Daisy and the Giant Killer Bird

This is Daisy, our basset / beagle mix:

Although this is how she usually looks at you:

While she is by far the sweetest dog I have ever met, she's a little short on courage. She’s grown more confident over the years, but would still kowtow if a mouse (or this reindeer doll) looked at her the wrong. (Random  – I just learned how to spell “kowtow.” I always thought it was “cowtow” and that it somehow had something to do with real cows. Hmm. Thanks dictionary.com!)  

A couple of nights ago, somewhere around 5 am, an upstairs smoke alarm started chirping for new batteries.

I’m a light sleeper. I heard the smoke alarm, and the ensuing commotion as Daisy came bounding down the stairs and sprinted into our bedroom.

“Mom, there is a giant, deranged bird upstairs and it wants to eat me!! Move over!”

Remember, she is a basset mix and her poor little legs are not made for jumping. It took her three tries to make it into the bed, and she managed to finally wake John up in the process.

(Note – The animals wake me up nightly. They all come to my side of the bed to whine and cry, because even they know that it takes two alarms to wake John. That said, when they do manage to wake him, they are usually in full freak-out mode and it is not good.)

She clambered over both John and I and laid down on the far side of him, crying and shaking. He tried to bear hug her, while she continually tried to burrow underneath him and lick his face, still crying and shaking.

John was having trouble waking all the way up and figuring out what was going on, and there was no calming Daisy down. “What the hell… Are you serious, the smoke alarm?… Daisy, dogs are brave protectors, what is your problem?…What time is it?... Calm down… quit it… get the hell down…”

(Yelling at Daisy when she is like this is risky because she has been known to literally have the pee scared out of her. Not something we wanted to happen in our bed. )

We got her back onto my side of the bed, and I took an extra blanket and covered her up. (This is the most scared that I have ever seen her, but Daisy and I had survived a thunderstorm earlier this week, so I knew what to do.) She was still shaking, but at least the licking and burrowing had subsided.

In the meantime, John went upstairs to slay the giant killer bird. He came back downstairs and threw something on the ground as he crawled back into bed.

“There. I removed the batteries.”
“You know it still chirps without them, right?”
“No way…”
*chirp*
“asjlkdfsalgqlasdflk” (I paraphrase…)

Back up the stairs, put in new batteries (thank goodness we had them), and back to bed with Daisy for another 30 min before we had to get up. The alarm went off, and she hopped down, completely refreshed and happy.

We live to fight another day.

Sleep Tight!
Linds

MS150 Training - Week 1

For those of you that don't know, I've signed up for the BP MS150. This is a really cool event in April that consists of a 2 day bike ride (180 miles!) from Houston to Austin, TX. Last year, some 12,000 people rode and raised more than $16 million for multiple sclerosis awareness and research. It’s a really amazing event, and something I’m really proud to finally be a part of. It’ll be a physical accomplishment for me, but also has the potential to really impact others. Pretty cool.

I joined the Schlumberger Cycling Club, and our first training ride was last Saturday. I was beyond excited, talked John into renting a road bike for the day and riding with me, and was already thinking about my blog post.

So how was the ride? I have no idea. I also came down with a fever on Friday evening. 101.1 degF... I get colds and headaches all the time. But. I. Do. Not. Get. Sick. Sick. I just don’t. It’s been a decade since my last fever, and this one knocked me flat. I missed the ride. I missed happy hour. I missed the Cotton Bowl. I missed our plans Friday night. I didn’t even make it off the couch and downstairs until Monday. And then I missed work Monday. (Ok, the last one was more of a perk than a pitfall, but still.)

I was awake for the ride, but I spent it right here… Cuddled up with my sweet kitty, blankets, water, Nyquil, and plenty of Kleenex (or TP before John  made it back to the store). At least I have a fantastic husband to tend to my every need, and kitties and a Daisy to love and cuddle me despite my snotty grossness.

(Just for the record… I will work much harder to solicit donations after I have completed at least one training ride, but just in case you're feeling generous... Please see my donations page here: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=8932213&pg=personal&fr_id=15941&et=ocTOAWG7EZaUfYDF-lVSEA..&s_tafId=183073)

Stay Healthy,

Linds

My new career plan

At 10:12 pm tonight, I intend to win big! $355 million here I come! Wooo!

My dear sweet husband said that, if we win the jackpot, he'll take a month off to travel and ski. Just for the record, if we win the jackpot, I will be taking the rest of my life off.

Linds

A REAL Christmas Tree

In my marriage, there are only two topics that I find to be completely non-negotiable:
1) We will always have cats and dogs and he will love them as much as I do.
2) We will always have a live Christmas tree like the ones that I grew up with.

As (probably too many) people down here will tell you, I've had some trouble finding exactly what we had at home, and some say that I have a tendancy to be a tad obsessive when things don't quite work out like I'd envisioned. 

I don't think it's that bad. As long as you have the right tree, lights, and ornaments, we are set!


The Tree:

A real tree is non-negotiable. I'd rather not have a tree than forfeit the character and smell of a living tree.


White fir is the top choice. The longer and softer the needles, the better. Unfortunately, despite my absolute best efforts, you can't get those trees in Houston.

I can settle for a douglas fir. We've had these for the past two years. They're just meh.

Frasier fir is absolutely unacceptable. Apologies to those who do like them, but the branches are way too prickly and the needles are too short to hide the wires from the lights. (I've gotten into pretty big arguments with tree salesmen over these. I don't like them and you're not going to convince me to. If I come in knowing the actual names of the different varieties, I think I know what I want.)

The Lights:

The lights were something that my dad did, and anybody that knows my dad knows that he works on his own schedule. One of my favorite Christmas memories was every year when my dad would wake us up at 3 am on some random December morning and we would get up, go into the pitch black family room, and see the tree beautifully lit with thousands of lights.

I know that I'm still short of the number of lights that my dad had on the tree, but I have more than a dozen strands, some 1800 bulbs. (And that this picture was taken in the middle of the day...)

Wrapping the tree is tedious, but unwrapping it can be tortuous. Last year was my first "hard core" tree, and I really had trouble once it came time to remove the lights. I wrestled with the lights for a while, but with a dozen strands, one wrong move can cause a really big mess really fast. After 3 hours, I got frustrated and this is what happened:

It worked, and I got the stupid lights off of the stupid tree, but thank goodness my husband was at work for that particular episode of crazy.

This year, I got smart. (Yes, I know, there is a fine line between obsessive and smart.) I tagged the end of each strand of lights, drew a diagram as i put them on the tree.

It saved hours of frustration and the tree survived intact, albeit less 80% of the needles.

Ornaments:

Ornaments were my mom's thing. We had ornaments dating back 20+ years, and each ornament had its own story. I loved unpacking all of the ornaments with my mom, hearing the stories, and placing them on the tree.

I'm still working on our collection. My friends always comment on how the tree is all OU. My husband comments on how the tree is all dog & cat ornaments. So maybe I'm still working on the diversity, but Oklahoma and my pets are my two favorite things :-)

Regardless, I still love slowly unpacking all of my ornaments. (And I wish that I would have thought to take pictures of them!) We have a thistle from Scotland that I bought right after John asked me to marry him. An ornament for our first Christmas married (2008), and another for our first Christmas together (2009). A beautiful hand blown Oklahoma flag (my favorite) to represent where we came from, and a cowboy santa for our new home in Texas. Pickles and santas, snowflakes (as close as we'll get to a white Christmas here) and candy canes, and no less than a dozen OU and dog/cat ornaments.

Put them all together, and you have a beautiful, sentimental, eclectic, unique tree!

Merry Christmas to everyone!