Snowed

RantWoman is going to timestamp this post but may post well after starting. RantWoman wants the Cisco Academy for the Visually Impaired announcement to stay findable. RantWoman has few illusions that anyone is relying on RantWoman for up to the second snow reports. If you are, may RantWoman suggest alternatives?

RantWoman is preparing for snowy onslaught by:

--getting regular fixes from Cliff Mass's weather blog:
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/
RantWoman finds the psychedelic model pictures slightly evocative of bad anti-drug videos from junior high but far more engaging that TV weatherpeople out somewhere in the snow in their weatherpeople gear saying "Yep, we sure are having weather."

--Reading the Mayor's disaster preparedness email. YEAH MAYOR!!!! THANK YOU for telling people to shovel their walks.

--sending an email with VERY IMPORTANT in the subject line to someone who has never spent a winter in Seattle about what snow means.

--calling up Little Sister to see whether anything needs to be fetched for their household. Little Sister already has a broken wheel on her wheelchair and it already won't get picked up until at least Thursday. Little Sister's household will be fine for now. RantMom cancelled her usual Tuesday morning activity but was on her way to Little Sister's. RantMom sometimes exudes a certqain "don't mess with grandma" imperative. RantWoman would probably tell RantMom either to stay home or to be sure to get on the bus home before the snow gets too bad. Worst case, RantMom can overnight at Little Sister's. RantWoman can walk to either household but really does not want to need to.

--fetching prescription refills from the pharmacy

--sharing previous snow misadventures and then shooing home two people who drove across town for a disaster preparedness meeting and someone else whose bus route is on snow reroute.

--noticing a few patches of blue sky and no snow yet. What? The heavens are laughing at....

--reading exhortations to get Yak trax or another kind of small rubberized cleats. Too late for this storm, but...

--redoing the schedule so the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing will stay open and staffed by people who do not have to travel. One of those is RantWoman who has other things she could stand to be doing. Oh well. People who do have to travel are welcome, but RantWoman's experience is that it's not worth it.
For example, RantWoman's usual Sabbath trip to the University district ended later than usual, just as inches of soggy snow were clogging our city's roadways. RantWoman's Sunday trip home usually takes about 45 minutes door to door. Sunday during the snow, it took over two hours. RantWoman assessed and did not even attempt another trip that evening.

--deciding whether to cook something. RantWoman still has a lot of lentil and rice dish and peanut butter cookies from her recent fits in the kitchen but RantWoman likes variety. RantWoman's larder tends to run heavy to ingredients rather than, say, cans of things that can just be opened. All of RantWoman's cooking options involve using electricity to either reheat or to turn ingredients into food. A pot of already cooked pasta might be a good thing if the power goes out. We'll see.

--washing dishes. Shhhh! RantWoman has no dishwasher except her two hands. RantWoman is satisfied with her dishwashing practices, even though she does not practice them every single day. But pre-snowstorm seems like a good idea.

--locating the crank flashlight

--making sure RantWoman's Kindle is charged. At this point, RantWoman's Kindle is a whole basket of literate good intentions. If the power goes out...

--stopping for lunch including both caffeine and fizz. RantWoman goes for weeks ingesting her caffeine without fizz, but somehow today fizz eemed a requirement.

--calling the RantBrother. RantBrother has seen snow in Seattle. After a spell in Pugetopolis, RantBrother finally moved back to Big Snowy State Where People know How to Deal with Snow. Thanks to modern telecommunications we can shake our heads together....