Rocket Trombone

Mid-April to Mid-June is one of my favorite times of year for one simple reason: the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I love hockey, and there is no better hockey than playoff hockey. The best-of-seven format generates instant rivalries that bring a whole new level of intensity and passion to the game. My favorite team, the Philadelphia Flyers, had a pretty impressive run, making it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1997.

The fact that the Flyers were in the playoffs at all was actually somewhat of a surprise. They had a very up-and-down season, at one point falling as low as 14th in the conference standings before firing their coach. They fought back after that, but another slump in the closing weeks of the season put their playoff chances in jeopardy. It came down to the final game of the season, where they beat the New York Rangers in the shootout, to finally clinch a playoff berth.

Entering the playoffs as a 7 seed, the Flyers drew the Atlantic Division Champion New Jersey Devils as their first opponent. The Flyers made surprisingly quick work of the Devils, ousting them in five games. This was a major upset, since the Devils’ goalie, Martin Brodeur, who is widely considered to be one of the best in NHL history, was outplayed by the Flyers’ Brian Boucher, who was seeing his first playoffs action in a decade. However, the victory came at a price. Top forwards Simon Gagne and Jeff Carter both suffered broken bones in their feet from getting hit by pucks, while Ian Laperriere was sidelined with a brain contusion, mild concussion, and required 60-70 stitches after taking a shot to the face.  Ouch.

Next up were the 6th seeded Boston Bruins. This series didn’t get off to a good start at all. The Flyers lost Game 1 in overtime, suffered another 1-goal defeat in Game 2, and were blown-out in Game 3, pushing them to the brink of elimination.  The odds were monumentally against the Flyers and the media constantly cited the bleak statistics of their situation.  I sat down to watch Game 4, simply hoping to avoid a sweep.  But there was a glimmer of hope and good news, Simon Gagne was back.  I’m not sure what happened, but it was a different team on the ice that night.  They fought like mad for the entire game, and Gagne scored the game-winner in overtime to extend the Flyers’ season by one more game.  They came out with the same intensity in Game 5, but injury struck again, this time claiming goaltender Brian Boucher with two sprained knees.  Michael Leighton stepped in, for his first ever playoffs appearance, and managed to preserve the shutout started by Boucher en route to a 4-0 victory.  The fans in Boston booed the Bruins off the ice, the cracks were starting to appear in their confidence.  Game 6 featured another brilliant performance by Leighton and the defense, with the Flyers winning 2-1.  In a week, the Flyers had done the unthinkable, winning three straight elimination games to go from the verge of being swept to forcing a Game 7.  As you can imagine, I was becoming more excited and nervous with each passing minute both during the games and in between.  Could they really pull this off?

Very early into Game 7, things were looking pretty bad.  Less than 15 minutes into the 1st period, Boston had scored three times to take a 3-0 lead.  Boston was playing great and the Flyers just didn’t seem to have any answers.  I was feeling pretty hopeless and about ready to hang up my jersey for the summer.  Peter Laviolette, the head coach, called a timeout to try to settle the team down and get them to focus.  I was impressed by his demeanor during the timeout.  He wasn’t yelling, he didn’t even look angry, instead he calmly, but firmly, outlined the things the Flyers needed to do to get back in it.  I couldn’t hear any of the words, but his attitude and body language even made me feel more calm and determined.  Apparently it worked on the team too, because minutes later, James van Riemsdyk scored to make it 3-1.  The Flyers came out on fire in the 2nd period, and scored twice more to tie the game at 3.  The tension was unbelieveable going into the 3rd period: the series tied at 3, the game tied at 3, 20 minutes to go in regulation.  Anything was possible, but it seemed almost certain that the next goal would win it.  And with 7:08 left on the clock, Simon Gagne buried the puck behind Tukka Rask to take the lead.  The final minutes felt like an eternity, I couldn’t sit down, I paced nervously back and forth across my living room watching the Flyers try desperately to keep the puck away from Boston.  When the final horn sounded, the Philadelphia bench erupted over the boards and piled onto Leighton in front of his net, and I collapsed in an emotionally-spent, orange-and-black heap on the couch.  The NHL’s advertising campaign for this year’s playoffs was “History Will Be Made,” and I had just watched it happen.

Two days later, it was time to move on to our next opponent, the 8th-seeded Montreal Canadiens.  Montreal had already knocked off the Presidents’ Trophy winning Washington Capitals and defending Champion Pittsburgh Penguins, so they were definitely a dangerous team to face.  The Flyers, however, riding the emotional high of their incredible comeback, asserted themselves immediately with 6-0 and 3-0 shutout wins in Games 1 and 2.  The fans in Philadelphia, never missing an opportunity to mock an opposing team, serenaded Montreal with the signature “Ole Ole” chant so frequently heard when the Canadiens score on home ice.  Montreal fought back in Game 3, taking advantage of a complacent Flyers squad, with a 5-1 blow-out win.  This swift-kick-in-the-pants was exactly what Philly needed though, as they came back to life for another 3-0 shutout in Game 4 and dispatched Montreal in Game 5 to claim the Prince of Wales Trophy as Eastern Conference Champions.  Onward to the Stanley Cup Finals!

Now, if you’ll permit a short digression, my wife asked me last September, before the season started, who was going to win it all this year.  I replied, without hesitation, “the Flyers!”  She rolled her eyes (“of course he would say that…”) and asked “well if it isn’t them, then who?”  I pondered it for a moment before giving my answer, “Chicago.”

So you can imagine how nervous I was when the Finals matchup was Philadelphia versus Chicago.  That’s just great.  The series got off to a wild start with a free-for-all Game 1, which the Blackhawks won 6-5.  Game 2 was much more reserved, but Chicago again claimed a 1-goal victory.  The series moved to Philadelphia and the Flyers struck back with two wins of their own.  Things were starting to heat up.  In Game 5, it was apparent that the Blackhawks were determined to crush any thoughts of another Philadelphia comeback.  They took an early 3-goal lead and maintained it for the rest of the game to an eventual 7-4 win, placing them one win away from the Stanley Cup.  As in the Boston and Montreal series, would this embarrassing loss be the moment to spur the Flyers on to win?

Philadelphia certainly came out with that kind of fire in Game 6, and Chicago was just as intent on stopping it.  It was an intense battle, but a lapse in intensity and offensive pressure by the Flyers late in the 2nd period allowed the Blackhawks to take the lead.  Philadelphia just didn’t have the defensive depth to hold off Chicago’s skilled forwards, and their top blueliners were getting tired.  Late in the 3rd period, Scott Hartnell scored to tie it and send the game to overtime.  The overtime period started off at a furious pace, as was to be expected.  Just over 4 minutes in, Patrick Kane skated down the left side, faked a pass, shot, and the puck…disappeared?  There was confusion on the ice, behind the benches, in the stands, and in the broadcast booth for what felt like an eternity.  Nobody could see the puck.  Only two people immediately knew where it was: Kane, who raced down the ice, jumping for joy, and Michael Leighton.  They both knew what no one else had seen, the puck had gone through Leighton’s legs and lodged itself under the padding at the back of the net.  It was over, Chicago had won.

I sat for a few minutes in shock and disbelief at the absolutely bizarre ending.  The Stanley Cup was brought out onto the ice and presented to the Blackhawks.  It was a bittersweet moment for me.  Obviously bitter because it wasn’t my team celebrating with the Cup, but sweet because it still is THE Stanley Cup, and it’s such a special occasion to watch a new group of champions skate around one-by-one with the trophy held high over their heads and looks of pure excitement and joy on their faces.  Most of the fans in Philadelphia left at the end of the game, but many stuck around to watch the celebrations for what I would guess are similar reasons.  But they still booed league commissioner Gary Bettman when he spoke. (heh heh heh)

So that’s it.  The season is over and we now enter the long 3.5 months until the next one begins.  The Flyers had an interesting year, for sure, but put on an incredible show at the end of it that I’ll never forget.  They achieved far more in the playoffs than anyone ever expected, and I congratulate and thank them for that.  We came so close this year, and I can’t wait to see what we can make happen next season!  Is it October yet?

Summer is still a month away, but we’re already getting an early start on concerts for this year!

Weezer! From very far away on an awesome cell phone camera...

Back at the tail end of April, Shelley and I headed down to College Park for Art Attack XXVII.  Art Attack is an annual event/concert at the University of Maryland, though Shelley was never able to go when we were in college, and I only went once or twice.  Hmm.  Either way, I was able to get a student ticket this year since I’m in grad school, which greatly offset the cost of Shelley’s general public ticket.  But on to the show!  This year’s artists were Weezer and Ben Folds, which is pretty awesome and why we wanted to go!  Ben Folds was on first.  He was performing solo on piano, and he was really great, but unfortunately the students didn’t seem to be that into it.  They were itching to see Weezer.  But who cares what they think, Ben if you ever read this, you were really awesome and I loved hearing you!  You are just incredible on piano and your lyrics are so unbelievably clever.  I’d love to hear him perform some day in a smaller venue, like some sort of piano lounge, that would be fun.  So then Weezer was up next.  It was pretty cool to see them live, especially after seeing Green Day last summer, since the Blue Album and Dookie were two of my favorite albums back in middle school when they came out.  Weezer played most of the songs off of the Blue Album, but did a lot of newer stuff too, much of which I had heard but some I hadn’t.  I, of course, sang along at the top of my lungs for all the old songs I knew!  It was an awesome show, so I think I’ll need to go back and get caught up on their albums that I’ve missed.

And then this past weekend, we went into DC for another annual concert event, the DC101 Chili Cook-Off.  We had never gone to Chili Cook-Off before, but they had a pretty good lineup of bands this year (Tears of Mars, Anberlin, Switchfoot, Cage the Elephant, Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots),  so we decided to check it out.  The festival is held in the parking lot of RFK stadium, so when we arrived, we had to wander around a bit to figure out where everything was, all you could see was a mass of people.  First, we checked out the chili competition area.  There were at least a few dozen tents set up for people making chili and putting out samples for the crowd to taste.  Some of them were pretty amazing, and you could put money in a jar at each stand (donations to the National Kidney Foundation) to vote for your favorites.  Once we were chili-ed out, we headed for the stage for the rest of the evening.  We missed Tears of Mars and Anberlin (well, we heard them from a distance), but were by the stage for everyone else.  I’ll admit, given my love for classic rock, these aren’t bands I’m very familiar with (except for STP, who were popular when I was in high school), but the concert was great.  I particularly liked Switchfoot and Alice In Chains, I might need to check out more of their stuff.  STP was good, but the lead singer was incredibly drunk and/or high, so anything he was saying in between songs was pretty unintelligible and I was just waiting for them to get on to the next song.  It started raining during Alice In Chains, but the crowd didn’t care at all, and it may have made the crowd surfers even more amusing.  Overall, it was a really great show and well worth the hours of standing out in a sun-baked parking lot!

So between those two shows, it was a pretty good kickoff to the summer concert season!  I’m not sure who we’re seeing next, but I know Barenaked Ladies, Keane, and OAR are all coming to Merriweather within a week of each other in August, so we’ll have to decide which of those to go see…

Joint birthday cake for Dad and I, made by our friend Darlene, with a volleyball for him and a rocket trombone for me!

So I turned 29 this year.  Not really much of a milestone in itself, but it does mark the beginning of the last year of my twenties.  That’s also not that much of a big deal, but I’m sure my friends and family will rub it in plenty next year when I reach 30.  So I have that to look forward to, right?  Anyway, my birthday this year (my “1st Annual 29th Birthday” if you will) happened to fall on a weekend, which I think is the best kind of birthday.  Why have just one day of fun when you can have a whole weekend’s worth?

I’ll arbitrarily start with Thursday night, when Shelley and I went rock climbing.  We’re still really enjoying this climbing thing, we even finally bought our own shoes a couple months ago.  But we don’t get to go very often, which is why I’ll treat this as a special event for this weekend, even if it actually had nothing to do with my birthday.

Friday night, the Flyers gave me a pretty awesome present, a 4-3 victory over Boston, sending them on to the Eastern Conference Finals against Montreal.  But this wasn’t just any win, this was Game 7 of the Conference Semifinals against Boston, and the Flyers had to fight back from being down 0-3 in the series to even reach Game 7.  Only twice in the history of the NHL has a team rallied from 0-3 in a best-of-seven series with four straight victories to take the series.  This game had plenty of suspense as well, as the Flyers found themselves in an early 0-3 hole, and scored 4 straight goals to win it 4-3.  This has also only happened twice previously in a Game 7 situation.  Since my birthday is always about a month after the regular season ends, it takes a pretty deep playoff run for the Flyers to still be playing by then.  They’ve accomplished that this year, which makes me very happy, but combining that with a comeback of this magnitude is simply amazing.  Despite the long, anxious week that passed during Games 4, 5, 6 and 7, this was an incredible event in Flyers history and I’m glad I was able to watch it!

Feeling much relieved on Saturday morning, I headed up to Dad’s house to spend a day working on the bimmer.  I know I haven’t written about the car on here in a very long time, but that’s mostly because work all but stopped over the winter, when it was just too cold to be in the garage.  But we’re back at it now, and continuing work on the interior.  We spent the entire day fighting with one of the interior door panels.  It turns out some of these new parts just don’t fit together quite as easily as the old ones did!  So we ended up not making as much progress as we hoped we would, but we have a good idea what we need to do to make putting the other door together go much smoother next time I go up.  Anyway, much more on that later, and I’ll get some new pictures up too.  The interior is looking amazing!

Mom behind the wheel of the Bimmer

When we finished up our work, Mom and Randy came by to take me out to dinner.  But first, they had to see the car!  This was the first time Mom had seen any of the work Dad and I have done to the bimmer, and I think she was pretty impressed.  We took it for a short spin around the block.  I let her drive, of course, since it was her car long before it was given to me!  Then we headed into Newark for a nice dinner at Caffé Gelato, and I drove back to Maryland.

Sunday morning, Shelley cooked up a big breakfast for the two of us, which was fantastic.  Then,  my sister and a bunch of our friends gathered for the Wine In The Woods festival in Columbia.  As the name implies, WitW is a wine festival held on the grounds of Merriweather Post Pavilion, known as Symphony Woods.  There is food, live music, lots of local art for sale and wine tasting tents from over 30 Maryland wineries!  Some of the wineries we had seen before, either at the Maryland Wine Festival or by actually visiting them, but others were new.  They allowed unlimited tasting this year, unlike in the past when you bought a strip of tickets to redeem for wine samples, so in theory I suppose it was possible to visit all of the tasting tents, but I wasn’t about to try.  You know, something about wanting to actually enjoy the wine and maybe even remember it the next day.  I would guess we managed to stop at about a third of the wineries.  I suppose that’s why it’s a two-day festival!  Either way, everything we tried was pretty good, and we ended up buying some wine to take home.  The lone disappointment was that Matt and I couldn’t find any deep fried cheesecake…

After the festival, we headed home and I again donned my Flyers jersey to watch Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Montreal.  The Flyers won in commanding style, shutting out the Canadiens 3-0.  So a very busy and extremely fun weekend came to a close on a happy note.  Thanks to everyone who was a part of it, you definitely made for a very memorable birthday!  Let’s do it again next year!

Shelley and I have been wanting to visit the Southwest US for quite a while, and decided that this was finally the year to do it.  There’s a ton of stuff to see in the Southwest, but it turns out that it is all very far apart (I’m from Delaware, so this is a novel concept to me), so we focused our efforts on the five National Parks of Utah: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches.

This was logistically the most simple of our recent big vacations.  No passports, no foreign languages or currency, no cruise ships or trains to catch, and no gigantic bags of ski equipment to keep track of.  We flew into Salt Lake City, picked up a car, drove around for 10 days, brought it back, and flew home.  Not to say that we didn’t really plan what we were going to do, but it felt like there was a lot less to worry about than usual.  Of course, Shelley is amazing at planning vacations, so there’s never anything to worry about in the first place!

As you can probably guess, we spent most of the trip hiking.  I haven’t looked closely at the park maps to try to total it up (if it’s even possible), but I’d have to guess that we averaged 5 to 10 miles a day.  Maybe I’m wrong on that estimate, but we hiked a LOT.  And really, what better way is there to see things like canyons, hoodoos, and arches than up-close and personal on foot?  We didn’t spend all of our time hiking, though.  In Moab, we went rafting on the Red River.  The trip included some Class 1 and 2 rapids, which were fun, but in general it was a relaxing trip and a nice way to spend an afternoon.  And in Zion we got to try our hand at canyoneering.

I’ve written on here a few times about our recent interest in rock climbing.  Canyoneering is clearly related to that, but it kind of works in reverse.  On our canyoneering expedition, we hiked up along the rim of Water Canyon, then donned our dry-suits, harnesses, and other equipment and worked our way back down the canyon, following the course of the river, by a combination of down-climbing and rappelling.  It was definitely one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  Aside from the obvious physical challenge, canyoneering challenged me mentally as well, mostly because I had never done anything like it before.  It takes some work to convince yourself that you can lean back, step backwards off a 70-foot cliff, and walk down to the bottom with little effort other than controlling the speed of the rope.  And then on the next one, which was a bit shorter, you add the slight complication that the cliff you are walking down is also a waterfall!  There is a problem-solving aspect to it as well, looking at your surroundings and deciding how best to use them and your equipment to safely reach the bottom with minimum impact to the environment you are travelling through.  Our guide was a fantastic teacher in this regard, encouraging Shelley and I to make our own decisions and learn from them instead of just always telling us what to do.  As I said, the whole experience was just incredible, not just seeing a canyon or hiking in and around one, but actually getting down into and travelling with the water, which is the very heart of everything that happens in a canyon.  Oh, and it was SO MUCH FUN!  I’d definitely love to go again, I just need to find some canyons on the East Coast first…

Of course, the scenery on our trip was also fantastic.  I thought that nothing could compare to our Alaska vacation last year, but Utah’s National Parks were right up there, though obviously for completely different reasons.  Even more surprising was that each of the five parks was so unique!  Zion is a straight, narrow canyon carved out by the Virgin River, with weeping rock faces, waterfalls, and emerald pools tucked away within its towering cliffs.  Bryce Canyon is a strange landscape of hoodoos and rock fins arrayed in the bowl of a large natural amphitheater, where the vivid colors of the red rocks, green fir forest and bright blue sky all stand out in sharp contrast against each other as well as the pure white snow that blanketed the ground.  (It even snowed while we were there!)  Capitol Reef features white sandstone domes, sheer reddish-brown cliffs with odd, almost fractal-like rock formations at their feet, and an orchard of fruit trees (a remnant of the early settlement of Fruita) that has managed to thrive among the arid landscape.  The aptly-named Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands consists of a large mesa standing 1,200 feet above a white-rimmed plateau (giving the illusion of being above the clouds) which itself is 1,000 feet above the Green and Colorado Rivers that border it on either side and join together at the southern point.  And Arches, as the name would suggest, contains a vast collection of rock fins, spires, and immense arches that stand in bold defiance of gravity and the other forces of nature that continually strive to tear them down.  There were so many times during the week that I caught myself just staring in awe at some rock or overlook for an unknown period of time and having a lot of trouble tearing myself away.

So now we’re back at home.  Maryland welcomed us with a big traffic jam on I-95 on our way home from the airport.  That was kind of harsh after spending a week driving on wide-open highways surrounded by the incredible scenery of the desert, I definitely didn’t miss our traffic.  But it is nice to sit at work and give my legs a rest!  It will take some time to go through our hundreds of pictures, but I’ll try to get some posted here as soon as I can…

So if you haven’t guessed already from the title of this website, or half of the content around here, I’m both an engineer and a musician. Usually, these two parts of me live together in harmony, since there isn’t a whole lot of overlap, but today they are in conflict. Some of you may be familiar with the band OK Go, or have at least seen their video for Here It Goes Again, which features the band dancing on treadmills. Recently, I learned about two new videos produced by the band, both for the same song from their new album, This Too Shall Pass.

The first features the University of Notre Dame marching band. Clearly appealing to my inner band geek.

And the second features a giant and very complex Rube Goldberg machine, which makes my engineer side all sorts of happy.

How can I possibly choose between them?  Which one do you like?

Seeing as we’ve had all this snow this winter, we might as well put it to good use, right?  Since we’re not particularly far north or up in huge mountains like the resorts in Vermont or the Rockies, conditions at ski resorts in the Mid-Atlantic (in my experience, at least), typically consist of packed, machine-made snow which can become icy as the loose powder is pushed away, or heavy and slushy if it melts and re-freezes every day.  Not that it’s ever stopped me from wanting to go skiing, mind you, it’s just not always the easiest stuff to ski on.  Well, that wasn’t the case this winter, thanks to frequent snow and very cold temperatures.  So Shelley and I busted out the skis twice this season to take advantage of the great conditions.

Who is that masked man?

Back at the tail-end of January, we headed to Seven Springs Mountain Resort, near Pittsburgh, with my coworkers Pete and Sam.  None of us had been there before, but we had heard a lot of good things about it so it sounded like a nice place to try out for a weekend, and we enjoyed it.  There were many merging/crossing trails on the mountain, and not a whole lot of signs, so much of the first day was spent figuring out where we were and how to get to particular trails.  Some of the green trails were very crowded, so they became more about people-dodging than skiing, and most of the blues were too steep for Pete and Sam’s comfort.  But by the end of the day, we had found an area that was relatively empty and had some nice trails with greens for them and blues for us.  We did get Pete and Sam on one of the blues, Giant Boulder, which was a really great run and probably my favorite on the mountain.  The second day, we returned to the same area, with occasional excursions out to other parts of the mountain.  The conditions over the weekend were really good; a few icy patches here and there, but the snow was very light and powdery because it was EXTREMELY cold!  The high on both days was in the upper teens, so we were definitely bundled up!  (see picture)

One funny story to demonstrate our confusion over the signs:  Shelley and I had found a blue trail we really liked, Little North Face, but were having some trouble figuring out where it started.  At first, we had found a way to drop into it from an adjacent green, but we knew that wasn’t the intended starting point.  Consulting our map, it looked like the actual entrance was just behind the unloading station of one of the chairlifts.  We skied around the station, and found ourselves at the top of a very steep drop.  “Well, this must be it,” we thought, and down we went.  It was VERY challenging, but we both did well and had fun, so we did it again.  The next morning, over breakfast, we were looking over the trail map and realized that the blue we had been searching for (Little North Face Slope) continued along the top of that cliff and into the woods, winding its way down to meet the main slope further downhill.  We had skipped that part and gone straight down North Face Slope, which was a black diamond!  So we had inadvertently skied our first-ever black diamond, twice.  It was kind of nice to know that we were good enough to survive it, but we decided not to press our luck and try again since our legs weren’t fully recovered from the first day of skiing!

Also worthy of note from Seven Springs, both days we ate at this amazing diner in Somerset, the Summit Diner.  Our meals were great, and very cheap (as diners tend to be), but the best part was their pies.  They had an impressive selection of pies to choose from, and every one we tried was fantastic.  Somerset is right off the Pennsylvania Turnpike, so if you happen to be passing by, I definitely recommend stopping for some pie.  The next time dad and I head to Ohio for a roller coaster trip, I know where we’re having dinner…

Two weeks ago, Shelley and I again took to the slopes, this time spending a day at Camelback with my mom.  I had been to Camelback once before, but it was way back in high school and like my 2nd or 3rd time on skis, so I had struggled some back then and was now excited to try the mountain again.  We had a great time; the conditions were absolutely amazing and the trails were really nice and LONG.  There was a little bit of confusion with crossing trails again, but it didn’t really matter because we loved everything we skied down.  The one disappointment was that four of the lifts in the middle of the mountain were closed, despite the fact that we were still paying holiday rates on the Friday after President’s Day Weekend and that there were a lot of people at the resort that day.  So that meant that the lines at the two quad lifts on either side of the gap were pretty long at times, which was a little annoying.  But we still managed to get a lot of skiing in, so I guess it wasn’t too much of a problem.  Either way, it was a nice day and we’ll probably go back sometime, being more careful to avoid the unusually-long holiday periods.

There was a bit of irony related to our two skiing outings this year, both times we went, the ski resorts had a significant snowstorm the week after we were there.  As I mentioned before, the trip to Seven Springs was at the end of January, so the following weekend was the first of the two “Snowmageddon” blizzards.  Our Camelback trip was two weekends ago, and last weekend there was a storm which, while it turned out to be only a dusting in Maryland, brought about a foot and a half of snow to the Pennsylvania ski resorts.  Very interesting.  Maybe ski resorts should hire us to come ski so that a snowstorm will follow after we’ve left.  Any takers?

Nana stretching to see over the snow!

This is turning out to be quite the winter!  We got another two huge snowstorms this week, making this the snowiest winter on record for the area.  Last weekend was the really big one, two to three feet of snow fell on the Mid-Atlantic states on Friday and Saturday.  I measured about 28″ here, which was tough to do since the ruler I used for the last storm is only 24″ long.  The wind also caused a lot of drifting, the snow pushed up against our back door was 40″ deep!  (For comparison, look at this picture of Nana watching the snow versus the one from the December storm! Also, you can click the picture to see more photos from this storm on Picasa.)  Obviously, it took quite a while for us to get dug out from the storm.  We shoveled our sidewalks and cleared off the cars on Sunday, but we couldn’t get anywhere as our parking lot and street had not been plowed yet.  The plows finally arrived Monday afternoon (though they kept getting blocked by people who were trying to drive anyway and getting stuck), and I was able to drive to work on Tuesday.

But winter wasn’t done with us yet.  Tuesday afternoon, the snow started falling again, and it continued through Wednesday, giving us another 1-2 feet of snow.  We dug out again on Thursday, the piles of snow in our yard and along the road growing higher and higher, and were able to get out on Friday.

I’ve lived in the Mid-Atlantic my whole life, and have seen a few large snow storms, but nothing came anywhere close to this!  Two blizzards of this size in one week just doesn’t happen very often.  The unusual severity of the storms was enough to spawn a long list of snow-related puns, such as Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, and Snowzilla.  Many things were closed for most or all of the week, and the local government was telling people to stay home.  My company didn’t close, but we were given permission to make up the hours later or work from home.  Since there was nowhere we desperately needed to be, we stayed put.  We had plenty to eat, dad gave us a huge turkey breast back at Christmas, so we turned it into chili, sandwiches, and turkey barley soup.  That one turkey breast literally fed us for a week.  We did miss two women’s basketball games since we couldn’t get to campus, but we got to watch them on TV.  Aside from the time I put in working from home and the hours spent shoveling outside, we mostly just relaxed, read and watched movies, so it was a decent “staycation.”

Next week, things will attempt to return to normal.  Driving will definitely be interesting for a while, since the snow on some roads has been compressed into a solid sheet of ice, lanes randomly shift or disappear, and there are huge piles of snow blocking your view at every intersection.  Hopefully government services like mail delivery and trash/recycling pickup will be able to resume.  Maybe schools will reopen, but there’s no word on that just yet.  One thing’s for sure, I won’t be seeing my lawn for a very long time…

Just a short random thought for you today.  I’ve mentioned before how I love the English language because of all the fun quirks it has stemming from its complex history.  Well, one of those quirks is the ability of some letters to create a wide variety of sounds or, conversely, the ability to create a particular sound out of very different combinations of letters.  To show you what I mean, let’s have a little fun with the word “potato”.  All six of those letters produce a sound that can be found elsewhere in English using different letters:

• The “p” has the same sound as the “gh” at the end of hiccough, which is just another way to spell hiccup.
• The “o” sound can be found at the end of although.
• Phthisic is a disease of the lungs, such as asthma or tuberculosis, and the “phth” at the beginning makes a “t” sound.
• Any schoolchild will tell you that “i” comes before “e”, except after “c”, or when sounding like “a” as in neighbor or weigh.
• We need another “t,” so we’ll turn to that well-known flying dinosaur, the pterodactyl.
• And the final “o,” we’ll take from the French-derived word beaux.

Putting all of that together, we arrive at our new word: ghoughphtheighpteaux.  Spell-checkers might not like it, but it sounds the same!

However, man cannot live on ghoughphtheighpteauxs alone, so what should we serve with them?  George Bernard Shaw recommends ghoti.

Happy 2010!  Can you believe it?  The year flew by and this past week was certainly no exception.  As always, I had grand plans for the many things I would get done during my week off between Christmas and New Year’s and, as always, my actual productivity fell far short of the mark.  But that’s not to say it was a bad week by any means.

Shelley and I both worked right up through Christmas Eve, then loaded all of our presents into my sleigh Jetta and headed up to Delaware for a weekend with the family.  We had plenty of activities to keep us busy, church with Pop-pop, big dinners at my parents’ houses, air hockey with Lauren, ping pong and a movie with Fitz, and spending lots of quality time hanging out with my sister.  We ate tons of good food (and what good is a holiday without that?) and got lots of fun presents.  I’m quite excited about my new Flyers jersey from Nana and Skimble (Shelley said she lent them the money), Star Wars DVDs from Mom and Randy (which I have to somehow convince Shelley to watch), and a big tin of loose tea from Jen that smells amazing, among other things.  Dad and Jackie bought mini-marshmallow crossbows for my stepbrothers and I, which resulted in an all-out war in the living room.  They’ll be finding mini-marshmallows in that house for months.

On Monday, we drove back to Maryland to enjoy a relaxing weekend at home.  We had plenty to do there too, movies to catch up on, Maryland women’s basketball games, dinner with friends to celebrate their engagement, New Year’s festivities, and Dad, Jackie and Jen came down to watch the Flyers play in the NHL Winter Classic and go see the Christmas trees at the Capitol and White House.  I also snuck in a second trip up home to work on the bimmer, although it was too cold to really do much.

Before we knew it, the week was over and it’s time to get back to work.  I might not have gotten to everything on my to-do list, like rock climbing, playing video games, or working on fun new things for Rocket Trombone (there were some serious chores too!), but it was an excellent week nonetheless.  As always , I hope you had time to relax and enjoy some good company and good food.  Happy New Year!

A huge snow storm made its way up the East Coast this weekend, dumping between one and two feet of snow pretty much everywhere it went.  I measured 16-19″ in our back yard.  It was a pretty awesome storm, it started snowing Friday night and didn’t let up until sometime Sunday morning.  Naturally, we took a bunch of pictures of the snow, and you can click the picture below to see the album on Picasa.

Nana watching the snow

I absolutely love snow.  To me, its what validates the cold weather during the winter.  If it isn’t snowing, it might as well be 70 out.  Unfortunately, snow doesn’t always play nicely with life as an adult.  Everyone rushes to the grocery store to stock up on supplies, more or less everything is closed or canceled, and it can be kind of a pain to get places.  Luckily, we didn’t have much in the way of plans for the weekend, so it didn’t bother us too much.  We did miss out on a couple holiday parties, which is sad, but that’s about it.  They’re not that great at plowing the roads around here either, so driving to work yesterday and today was a bit tricky, but my Jetta got me there safely.  For other people though, it was a lot worse.  The last day of finals at Maryland was cancelled, as were commencement ceremonies for the weekend.  Lots of my friends were trying to get home, since Christmas is next week, but their flights were canceled.  So I can totally understand why some people hate it so much.  But not me.  I guess I’ve been fortunate enough to not have any serious problems come from a snow storm, and any inconvenience is trivial in comparison to how much I enjoy watching and playing in the snow.  So I hope you enjoy the pictures, stay safe if you have to travel anywhere, and take some time to go play outside!