Gray.

It’s almost April, why is there snow on the ground? It was 68 degrees and sunny outside yesterday.

Merry Christmas!

From Buffalo (where there is, surprisingly, very little snow!)…

Peace and joy!

A Little More Community Involvement

With all the blizzard-like conditions going ’round in the last several weeks, I got it into my head at some point that I need to spend more time involved in the community than I do at present. During the few days I was snowed in my house last month, I called down to the hospital closest to my home to see if they were in need of any local assistance such as food, water, help with paperwork, etc. You see, while most of us have the luxury of bunkering down during a storm (and, I dare say, enjoying the time away from a scheduled life for a while), those who work in urgent service industries (hospitals, energy companies, city workers, etc. ) stay hard at work to keep us warm and safe while we do. I found out that, during the most difficult bouts of weather, much of the medical staff in the hospital were stranded without food and transportation to get home, some of them sleeping at the hospital for several days. They were also in need of drivers (with trucks, vans, SUV’s) to pick up staff to come in and cover shifts and others who were willing to share their food or time.

I signed up to be an official hospital volunteer a little over a week ago. During my volunteer training the other day, the facilitator emphasized how dependent many hospitals are on volunteers, especially in emergency situations. Given that I’ll only be volunteering, at most, 3 or 4 hours of my time per week (I spend way more than that surfing the web in a day!), I felt assured that my small contribution would be useful and appreciated.

I haven’t been assigned to a department yet, but I’ll be sure to write more after I get started. This is sure to be an interesting experience!

An Imagined Winter

Or maybe not so imagined…

Our most recent snow drifts have inspired me to look deeper into some terrain rendering software I stumbled across while surfing the web one day. It’s called Terragen and it’s pretty neat what one can do with it. Here is an image I rendered after playing with the software for an hour or so (click on the image to see it in finer detail):

A few other images I’ve made can be viewed here.

More Snow in Colorado?

The weirdness:

Inches of snow in Boulder, CO: lots

Inches of snow in Buffalo, NY: zero

I just received an email from the airline carrier I booked my return flight with, it says if the current storm continues through the weekend my flight will be re-booked! No! After waiting for a taxi for FOUR hours very late on Sunday night, finally giving up and hitching a ride part of the way out to DIA, and being re-booked THREE times after I got there so I couldn’t fly out until late on Monday, I just can’t make it through another airport fiasco.

When the Buffalonians think you’re in trouble…

I’m from Buffalo, NY, which is, admittedly, one of the snowiest places in this country. Whenever the issue of being “snow-savvy” came up amongst my Colorado peers, I’d always test their mettle with stories that began with sentances like, “When I was a young girl I had to walk through 6 feet of snow, and uphill no less, to get to school”, or “Eh, I took my driver’s license test in weather worse than this”…and I’d be telling the truth. I’ve lived through the Blizzards of ’77, ’79, ’85, ’92 and ’01, with wonderful, tall tales to tell about each of one (even if , technically, I was too young to remember any of it).

Well, today, Coloradoans have proven themselves to be made of tougher stuff than I thought, the kind us Buffalonians won’t easily scoff at: I awoke this morning to find that a large, heavy and THICK blanket of snow had landed outside my front door! Reports are rolling in claiming that, in the last 36 hours, over 5 feet fell in various, southern parts of the state, with 2-3 feet falling in much of the remaining Denver metro areas. I could easily see that about three feet had accumulated in my neighborhood alone.

I stayed bunkered in the house for most of the time, only coming out late this afternoon after the snowfall had broken. Through it all I received phone calls of support and emails of concern from family and friends back east–most to express their best wishes, a few to have a good laugh–and I am very grateful for all of it, thank you! But the one I’ll remember the most came from my mom, who called and said:

“I thought you’d like to know, a friend of mine just called to say,

‘Those of us in Buffalo should thank our lucky stars we don’t live in Colorado.’ “

Okay Colorado, this time, you take the prize

Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Let’s try a quick recap of what’s been going on:

• School is going well. Homework and exams began rolling in at a regular pace a few weeks ago, so it feels real. I’m pretty confident about my ability to maintain high marks this semester. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the grant I was hoping for. That was disappointing, especially since I was told on several occasions that I had it. The most frustrating part was waiting—almost 2 months of being told it’s coming, to end with “Oops, sorry, no it’s not.”—which launched me into a long, pedantic dissertation on the unreliable state of education funding today. Don’t worry; I’ve spared this blog the gory details . If you’re interested, though, shoot me a note. I’d be happy to commiserate some more.
• New place: So yeah, since I didn’t get fully funded this year, I’m moving at the end of this month to less-expensive digs.