The winter that never ends

I so didn't mean to leave you all hanging after my wordless wednesday post two weeks ago. I really didn't. But I had two grant proposals and some minor drama involving a co-author to deal with, and so my poor little blog fell to the wayside. One day I will tell you all about my grant proposals and co-author drama, and knowing me, that will probably be in July. Next year. I mean, I haven't updated my picture albums since Christmas 2012, so to say I'm behind on life is an understatement.
Anyhow, I digress.

Several of the pictures I posed two weeks ago (which you can revisit here) showed copious amounts of snow and ice. And as I'm typing this, the temperatures are only just now peeping out of the twenties. Fahrenheit. That means that on this day, March 26, 2014, at 9:24am, it's still freezing. I can't even begin to tell you how completely abnormal this is. When I last posted, I was writing about the deep freeze we were facing. It was quite dramatic, I was on the phone with the Dutch news two days in a row, we had to deal with burst pipes, dying plants, and levels of car window scraping I haven't dealt with since my days in Germany. Once the temperatures soared into the low 50s once again, we assumed we were done with the craziness.

Oh no.
The first picture in the series was taken about two weeks after that first initial freeze. We had snow, y'all. Snow. Two inches of it. It started on a Tuesday, and didn't start to think about melting away until Thursday afternoon. It was nuts. My supervisor pretty much forbade me from coming into work on Tuesday, and with campus closed on Wednesday, I was safe and sound. But definitely baffled. Being the little workaholic that I am though, I went into work on Thursday, and thanks to that I can now attest to the fact that yes, those signs posted before bridges (the ones that say "caution, bridge ices before road) are right. I am also delighted to report that almost six years after wondering about the purpose of those very signs on this  blog, they are there for a reason. Fortunately, every single other driver in Georgia was too scared to get on the road (or stuck in the traffic jam to end all traffic jams), and so I just had fun testing the driving-on-ice skills I acquired in Germany.

And then, spring began, right?

Oh no. You see, the picture of my car covered in ice? That was taken another two weeks later, when Georgia was hit by an ice storm. Most people around here didn't even know what that was until they realized that the rain coming down was made up of pellets of ice.

Also, funny story there.
Ice, like rain, will fill up your pool. Who knew, I know, but there you have it. And as you all know from last summer's woes with rain and pools, you can't let a pool fill up above the liner, because the liner will pop out. And then DixieChick will have a heart attack. So ideally, one drains the pool a little when the water gets too high. It's an easy enough job - turn off the filter, set the system to "waste", turn the filter back on, and voila. Perfection. Or at least a pool that drains.
However, when it's ten below and there's ice coming down from the sky, one may not pay attention to the water level in the pool, and go to bed assuming all will be well.
Never assume. Especially during an ice storm.
Because, you see, ice does fill up your pool rather quickly, and with temperatures below freezing, the system won't let you turn off the filter (it's a nifty little safety thing called "freeze protect"). And guess what you need to do to set the system to "waste"? (hint: the answer is about ten lines up). Yep, you need to turn the filter off.

So there you are, it's six in the morning, ice is coming down in steady sheets, your pool level is dangerously close to the top of the liner, and you can't turn your filter off. What does any self-respecting woman do?
Well, I don't know.
I can tell you what I did, which was teach the kids a new series of very inventive cuss words, try to siphon the pool, which apparently doesn't work with an in-ground pool, and then as a last resort sob into husband-dear's voicemail (as he was away from his desk, as these things go) that our pool was going to overflow and we were going to have pay for a new liner and the world as we know it was going to end. (Don't judge, it's been a rough semester, y'all).

And once again husband-dear saved the day. Seriously, without him, I don't know what I would have done. Gotten a bucket and started draining the pool by hand I guess. No, he pointed out that our pool system, like all electrical systems, has a breaker. Yes, my twenty-two years of education have not been wasted at all. Not at all.
So anyway, husband-dear explained you could just flip the breaker instead of turning off the filter, switch the valve, and flip the breaker back. Now my image as an independent woman might have been saved had I been the one to do that. But no, unfortunately, that image is tainted for good. You see, by the time the husband reached me, I was on my way to work, cussing myself out for now being late for a meeting too. So instead my poor, underappreciated, hard-working spouse came home, drained the pool, and went back to work.

Can't help lovin' dat man o' mine!

So anyway, this is a very roundabout way to tell you all that I'm seriously done with winter and ready for spring. And summer. And vacation. Bring it on!

Wordless Wednesday

Soo..instead of telling you all about how sorry I am for not posting all this time and going into all the reasons why, I thought I would get out of doing all of that and just try to capture it by posting a few lame pictures. I figure if I give it a cute alliterating title you all might even dig it too! 

I know, you don't have to thank me.