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Winter Wonderland

First off, I'm bad in bed. Ask Shanshu.

And, while it's not quite a winter wonderland (it's not even winter yet), snow lovers such as myself are welcoming our first few flakes. Our second snow was Monday night, and unlike our first, it stuck. Granted, it was nothing more than a light dusting, but it was still beautiful to watch fall. We're lucky, because 150 miles west of us the same system was a blizzard that caused some pretty awful conditions. Tonight we are slated to get our third snow, and since the temperature has been hovering just above the freezing mark today and is currently falling, I'm hoping for another little dusting and some more pretty flakes. Now, what I would like is for it to give us a few inches of accumulation and for it to remain snowy and wintery through New Year's. I'm pretty sure, however, that we'll have our usual brown and ucky December, and I'll have to wait another month for my sledding.

By the way, have any of you ever been to Topeka High? I was there this morning. It is GORGEOUS. It reminded me of the little private English boarding schools I saw when I was there. The outside is designed like a Tudor mansion, and the inside looks like Hogwarts. Beautiful. The entrance hall with it's formality, the cafeteria with it's warmth...I know it sounds crazy to be gushing over a high school, but I was so seriously impressed I can't believe myself.

Later this morning, I was driving along the I-70 turnpike between Topeka and Lawrence, following behind a utility truck with a ladder attached to it's top rack. The ladder fell off the truck and landed on it's side, open, in between the two lanes of highway. I slammed on brakes, as did the truck passing me in the other lane. We both slowly went around the ladder on our respective shoulders. The van that had dropped the ladder did not stop. I happened to be exiting at the same exit as the van, which was a few yards away from where the ladder fell. When we stopped in line to pay the toll, I got out of my car and ran up to the van. They rolled down their window, and said that they knew the ladder fell off and were going back for it. I got back into my car, but I should have berated them for not stopping when the ladder fell off and retrieving it. After all, a ladder blocking both lanes of a 70 mph highway certainly poses a traffic risk. When I pulled up to the toll booth, I told the toll booth lady about the ladder. The guys in the utility truck hadn't even told her about it! (For those of you who don't know, the toll lady works for the state department of transportation, which is responsible for maintaining the turnpike and therefore would be the ones to remove the ladder if the owners failed to). Then, I watched as said utility truck drove on it's happy way into Lawrence, and realized that these guys were definitly not going back to pick up their ladder. Sigh.

posted by Jen @ 11/30/2005 02:08:00 PM