Greg McElhatton

I do find it funny that when it snows an awful lot, my gut reaction (no pun intended) is to cook. I have actually run out of one size of plastic container, between all the leftover cream of cauliflower soup, chicken and oregano chili, and sun-dried tomato chicken that I’ve been making. (The latter two in my trusty crock pot, which I love to death this time of year.)

Meanwhile, they’re calling for more snow today and tomorrow. We’ll see what happens. I’m hoping at this point they’re over-predicting and it will just be five inches. (Just five inches, he says. An attitude normally shared by people who live much further north than me.) I suspect the 25″ is some wild-overshooting. Or is that just a nervous whimper in my voice?

At the rate we’re going, I won’t see my office all week. I am still working, though; the government may close but our deadlines don’t change as a result. So I’ve got the laptop set up and I’m plugging away. I did have a nice lunch with Karon today though; we couldn’t take being in our homes any longer and needed a change of scenery. It’s always nice to see something different even for a few hours. (I ate way too much, though. I’d say it would be salad-for-dinner time except that salad ingredients were apparently the first to get wiped out locally. Oh well.)

I’ve also decided that if I ruled the world I’d get all of the major highways heated. Or perhaps twenty feet tall hairdryers at strategic locations to melt all the snow. Seriously, where the hell are we going to put it all? I have mental fantasies of the snow getting airlifted into the Potomac River, but it usually then ends with the Potomac overflowing and sweeping Old Town Alexandria away. Oops.

Fingers crossed for no more snow. Please, please, please no more snow.

They’re predicting snow again for the DC area, and a lot of it. After our mid-December snowpocalypse, I’ve noticed that there’s been a distinct shift in attitude when it comes to snow in this area. Normally those who hate snow curse bitterly at the mention of it, and others jump up and down with varying degrees of excitement. When we had snow last weekend, though, I didn’t spy anyone outside frolicing in the snow. No one trying to sled, or build snowmen, or even just walk around and enjoy it. The only people I saw outside were firmly heading towards a destination, usually to or from the Whole Foods down the street.

I can’t say I blame them, to be honest. I hated snow with a white hot passion (no pun intended) for many years, thanks to working at a grocery store. Snow meant everyone would rush into the store and buy up all the milk, eggs, bread, and toilet paper. (I believe I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before as “french toast and diarrhea season.”) And whenever people would start to finally get normal about the weather and their reactions, we’d have something crazy like the blizzard of 1996 where two feet of snow dumped onto the area.

Mind you, that was fairly nuts. Our trucks were immobilized for several days and all the stores actually did start running out of products (thanks in part to people coming in and buying 12 gallons of milk all at once; no lie, I saw it on far too many occasions) and we had lines going all the way to the end of the store. Once the trucks were able to finally get out again, mid-week, they could only stop at one store in each region. So I’d take the seats out of my parents’ mini-van and drive it to the drop-off store and fill it up with boxes of eggs and bring them back to our store. (By Wednesday I started to wonder if the only actual food we had left in the store was butter-flavored cooking spray.) It was, easily, the most memorable part of working at Giant Food after graduation from college.

Anyway, the madness has begun here once again. They’re predicting a snownami for Friday and Saturday, and people are freaking out. I’d actually forgotten about it while on the way to work this morning, and thought I’d stop by Trader Joe’s and get something for lunch. Eek. Well, at least it was only 9:30 when I got there, so while it was busy for that time of day, it wasn’t totally-insane levels of people. Yet. (A co-worker went to the grocery store an hour ago and said it is running out of food. Oh come on people, how can you not have food for several days in your home already?)

So, here’s my hopes for the snow, in order of my hopes.

1. Psych! Only a couple of inches of snow.
2. It’s not so bad that the movie theatre up the hill closes, as I’d like to see Invictus this weekend.
3. Entire Eastern Seaboard gets so much snow that it snaps off and plunges into the ocean, thus meaning that everyone who bet that sort of thing would happen to California first looks awfully surprised.

Really, #1 or 2 would be fine. Too much to ask for? Oh well, maybe I’ll finally get to re-arrange the contents of my kitchen cabinets.

*blows dust off of the website*

Er, yeah. It’s been a busy month. But I suppose I should at least briefly mention my trip to Florida two weeks ago, to run the Goofy Race and a Half Challenge at Walt Disney World. It probably would have been an unremarkable trip (aside from running 39.3 miles over the course of a weekend), except for one little problem… that horrible cold front that ripped through a lot of the country, including Florida.

When we signed up for these races a year ago, I honestly didn’t imagine us bundled up with three layers of clothing, winter hats, gloves, and still being cold. Which is, of course, exactly how we felt.

Yeah. Cold. Very cold. So cold that on Sunday we bought additional pairs of gloves, rain parkas, and towels for additional insulation for before the race started. (Once you’re running, it doesn’t so matter that it’s 25 degrees out. And sleeting. No really, it sleeted on us on Saturday for the half marathon.)

On the bright side, we did get to pose for all sorts of silly photographs with various Disney characters; for the full marathon we stopped at literally every single one we saw. We figured it would be a good way to combat having run the half marathon the morning before.

I mean, hello, it’s Stitch! Only from my favorite (non-Pixar) Disney animated movie Lilo and Stitch, after all. As the race went on, we got a little sillier and punchier, too. So we ended up with photos like this:

So yeah, we froze during the races. But it was a ton of fun. And the other days were nice, too. We went to all four parks over the course of three days, which was a blast. We ate at two of the nice restaurants in Epcot (Le Cellier and Teppan Edo), something I’d never done before and quite enjoyed. And thanks to an iPhone app that tells you wait times for rides, we went on a lot of rides.

Oh yeah, even when it wasn’t 6am, we still froze. Oh well. It would have been nice to wear t-shirts instead of coats, but it was none the less a great trip. But now I need to go back sometime when the weather is a little more cooperative, right?

Due to strong winds (up to 50mph) that provided a wind chill factor of 15 degrees, I went running indoors at my gym this morning instead of outside. Afterwards, while driving home, my windshield started fogging up. I rolled down the window to let it cool off, but it wasn’t until I stopped at a red light that I noticed it. Thanks to myself being particular warm and everything around me being particularly cold, I had a huge amount of steam pouring off of my head and shoulders. (Needless to say, I was rather bummed I didn’t have my camera with me.)

I like to think that people driving down Route 50 did a double-take at the steam roiling off of a driver. I know I did and the driver was me! After all, I looked rather similar to a Dr. Strange villain.

Huh. We actually got one for a change. Well, at least some people are excited about it.

I’m always surprised when we get crazy warm temperature in the winter here in DC, and this weekend was no exception. 55 degrees on Saturday! 62 degrees on Sunday! When I’m opening up the windows and turning off the heat, well, you know it’s working out well.

Ironically, of course, I’m going to be in southern California for part of next week and I think it will actually be slightly colder there. What’s up with that? Oh well, I’m enjoying this weather while I can.

Even despite a bad ending to an otherwise good 14-miler on Saturday, it felt great to run outside and move in the weather. It just makes me that much more eager for spring. But until then, I’ll settle for a good meal on Saturday night at La Ferme in Chevy Chase, outdoor seating at Sunday brunch, having the windows open while writing this afternoon, and now sitting down for Friday’s Battlestar Galactica. I had a ton of stuff to get accomplished this weekend, but it’s nice to have them all done.

It was unseasonably warm in the DC area today—I believe the high hit 60 degrees—which was perfect for my 12-mile run today.

Not so perfect was that with all the snow we had last week, I ended up having to regularly slow down and dodge huge sheets of ice. All that speeding up and slowing down gets old, and it’s hard to really find yourself in a good rhythm. Ah well.

Afterwards, though, I was doing a calf stretch and staring up at the sky and thought to myself, “My run may have been rather bleah, but it sure is a beautiful day.” And that it certainly was. It made all the frustration almost worth it.

(Meanwhile, we should in theory be getting more snow in about 28 hours. Yeesh.)

First off, before I forget, huge thanks to everyone who sent well wishes (both on my own website as well as the LJ crosspost). I think it really does help the healing process to know that people actually want you to get better. (Even if it’s just so they can then tackle you with impunity.)

But yes, things are definitely on the mend here. I’m back to normal foods (although with this hideous cold that’s blanketing a lot of the country right now, a soup diet is not such a bad thing!), although still being careful with what I injest. Hey, a little extra care on what I eat isn’t really a bad thing now. Friday was definitely the turning point of going from “I still feel awful” to “I am starting to feel like I am actually getting better.” By the end of the weekend, I was thinking, “I can’t wait to go back to work.”

At this point more than anything else I’m waiting for the Steri-Strips™ to fall off of my four incision points (a process that takes “1 to 2 weeks”), and to hopefully get the all-clear next Monday to start exercising again. Honestly at this point I suspect that tackling the full National Marathon at the end of March is probably a no-go, but if I’m allowed to start running next week then we shall see how it goes. Until then I am being good and not lifting heavy objects, or going to cycling class, or using the rowing machine, or anything else of the sort. It is, of course, driving me a little insane.

Still, easy does it, so it’s just as well that I am having a pretty low-key Christmas. Charlie is visiting his family in Alabama, and my older sister’s visit was right before my surgery, so it will just me my parents and Suzanne (plus the adorable canine Bruno) during the day, and then relatives and family friends over for dinner in the evening. I did receive a tripod from Charlie as part of my Christmas present, so maybe this weekend I can finally try out some night photography that doesn’t involve the camera being perched on top of my car or a ledge. (Dear weather: please cooperate.)

Oh, and as a get-well gift to myself, I am now the proud owner of an Xbox 360. It came with two free games (Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones) but so far what I am really playing on it are two games I purchased on the XBLA online store—Braid (a platform game which plays with the flow of time and is mind-bendingly wonderful), and Uno. No, really. Tod and Ed have been raving about Xbox Uno and yeah, it is awfully fun. So I certainly have things to keep me busy. (Oh, and my Xbox Live gamertag is “Greg McE” if you would care to add me. You can chortle at my pitiful number of Achievement points so far.)

It’s all good!

That means things are going to start getting warmer now, right? Right?

…maybe?

Ok, not really. But at least the days will start getting longer. I am all in favor of that. Yay for more sunlight!

(And until then, here’s a little pretty-and-harmless snow for everyone.)