12.26.01 – the weather outside is frightful

whoa, nelly, is there a lot of snow out there! flew to boise on christmas eve, came back to buffalo late on christmas day to find that 2 and a half feet of snow had fallen while i was gone. holy shit is that a lot of snow. when i went to find my car in the parking lot, i just walked to the place where i thought i’d parked it and started digging till i could confirm that it was the right car. okay, so i didn’t really heed all of those safety instructions that told me to keep a shovel and boots in my car, so i ended up spending more than an hour digging my car out of the snow with a long-handled ice scraper, wearing my wool dress coat and little leather sneakers. i made it home safely at least and sat

down to a second christmas dinner with hannah and seth around midnight.

my trip to boise was much too brief but fun; i had approximately 25 hours to spend with my family before i had to turn around and fly back to buffalo. christmas was characterized by the usual happy chaos that accompanies all of our family gatherings; christmas carols are on the stereo (the family is firmly divided into pro- and anti-manheim steamroller factions), gifts are frantically purchased and wrapped at the last possible moment before dinner, the dog runs around shredding all the christmas wrap she can find into 2-inch squares, we have a birthday party for my twin uncles, my brothers run in and out of the house working on their home-made snow-making machine, the outdoor cat streaks in the open door and has to be tracked down, everyone talks at once and there is much laughter, good-natured teasing and absurd arguments.