Blizzard! Yay!

We had the first blizzard of the season blow through here over the course of last night and today. Since Chris had to get out to the airport and onto a plane, this caused some problems but other than that it was beautiful. I just got back inside from shoveling the driveway -- let me tell you, since our snow melts so quickly here, the need for shoveling is rare and therefore quite novel.

Confidential to my next-door neighbor: You are an idiot. Surely you knew that it was snowing for most of the night and almost all of today. As you drove home from work, did you think that your house and driveway were spared the 8-12 inches that every other surface in Highlands Ranch acquired? Did you think that your husband came home early and painted your driveway a suspiciously white fluffy color? There must be some rational reason as to why you tried (and failed) to drive your Mini Cooper up your driveway. You got about halfway up, got stuck, then tried again. I giggled as your car's little tires spun around in an extraordinarily futile fashion. After a good minute or two of reversing and trying different angles, you finally gave up and joined me, the guy across the street, and several other people down the block who had the good sense to shovel while the shoveling was good.

Next time, remember: If there's snow, you must go... into your garage and pick up your snow shovel, you lazy soccer mom. (I'm no Johnnie Cochran, sorry. I get a little worked up sometimes.)

We lost this tree to the weight of the snow, as you can plainly see. It's still got the sad little bungee cords on it that we used to try to keep it upright during the summer's windy thunderstorms.

The snow lasted until about one in the afternoon, and the clouds started to break around 4:30. For about 15 minutes, the entire world was blue and orange and pink. I didn't have the time (deadline, remember?) to go and get all the pictures I wanted to, so these will have to do. This is the roof of our neighbor's house as I see it from my desk...

And this is what it looked like from our deck. The sun just managed to make it out from under the clouds before going behind the Rockies for the night -- I'm glad I got up off my duff to take the picture.