Thursday, January 04, 2018

Daily Commute, Big Nor'easter Edition!

Good evening from Brooklyn, where I'm quite happy to be snug and warm at home, with a big pot of corned beef and cabbage simmering on the stove.

I did actually make the trek in to work today. There's an option to be set up to work from home from time to time as necessary; I've never chosen to "take advantage" of that because I really prefer to be done with work when I leave the office, even if that does mean the occasional weekend day where I go in to meet a deadline -- or the odd day where I have to at least make a good faith attempt to get to work even if all the news for the last week has been about SNOWMABOMBAGEDDON!!!

Seriously, this one did end up being a very serious winter storm, but the hype still bugged me - and excuse me, Weather Channel, but Grayson??? Bad enough the Weather Channel has taken it upon themselves to name these winter events, but you'd think they could come up with something better than a name which just makes me picture some guy with elbow patches on his tweed jacket, leaning casually on a mantelpiece, smoking a scholarly pipe. Apologies to anyone out there who might actually be named Grayson and is nothing at all like my stereotypical academic yuppie. I'd actually managed to not know what this one's WC-assigned moniker was until an internal communications memo about the storm came out, using the name as the subject line. I nearly blew tea out of my nose. Grayson??? Jeeze.

OK, enough for that rant (although I may come back to the topic with a little SNOWMABOMBAGEDDON! bonus post tomorrow). Today was a good day to be riding the subway, things were a little slow but considering conditions, I would rate things as "Not bad at all" at the times when I was travelling. Would NOT have wanted to be driving around in a car today! I checked the MTA website first thing when I got up, reports there were that all was well on my line, so I threw on some blizzard edition office casual clothes (which looked an awful lot like hiking clothes, for some reason), set out, and arrived at the office without any particular trouble. Must've been true on other lines too, because the office was not the ghost town I was kind of expecting to find. In my department, six out of seven of us live in or right across the river from NYC. Our department head lives farther out in the suburbs and he worked from home. 

The rest of us left early, but I did get in a pretty good day, finishing the things I'd wanted to get done and a few other items too. I would've gotten more done except that we went through the final move to the shiny new renovated part of the building and now, for the first time in a very long time, I can look up from my work and see outside! WOOHOO! I'm really happy about that - it's especially great to see the days getting longer, yesterday was clear and it was so nice to look up after 5:00 and still see light in the sky. Today's weather was kind of hypnotic with the wind-whipped snow whirling about.

I was a little concerned about getting home, the B and Q do run outside, in a cut, and can have problems if we get too much snow dumped on us too fast, and it was really coming down through the afternoon. Right around the time I first started thinking I had really better go if I didn't want to end up camping out in my cubicle, though, the snow stopped - phew! Checked the MTA website,  my trains looked to be OK, so I did a couple more quick things I was originally going to let wait, then headed out, and got home in time to cook. Wind was still a little on the crazy side but I don't have to go too far out of the way to get to a grocery store. NYC's good that way.

Glad it all worked out so well.

Notes from places other than the office:

Sebago clubmates are reporting ice floes in the basin. May not be much winter paddling for a while (I am looking forward to a pool session on Sunday, though).

I've started watching the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club site - with weather this cold they may get to sail this year!

Commute pictures below. The last one is from the trip home and you can see how much it had cleared up; it was still very windy and cold but the snow seemed to be done. As usual, click on any picture for a slideshow view. BRRRR.

Looking out of the living room window

Foster Avenue

E. 17th St.

East River, Brooklyn Bridge, and Manhattan, as seen from the Manhattan Bridge.

Broadway

The view from the office


Look, I can see outside from my desk now! Hurray!

Photo on the monitor is a Sebago clubmate's showing ice on Jamaica Bay, a couple of days ago.
Heading home. Still cold and blowy but the snow was done.

6 comments:

Rena said...

I don't know how you deal with all of the bad weather that heads your way. I used to live in KY with all of the snow and cold but moved to SC to get away from it. Lol, it's 18 degrees here today!

bonnie said...

I was seeing all the snow down south, that's crazy. Iguanas falling from the trees in Florida??? Sea turtles stunned by the cold?

Right now I am just dreaming of Hawaii, wish I could run there for a month or three!

Haralee said...

How nice you can see outside in your new office digs! Boy that weather looks really bad to me. Although I grew up in MA I haven't lived there in 40 years. In that time I had to go back twice during winter and I was one cranky cold woman!

bonnie said...

We've actually had a couple of milder winters in a row. I'm out of practice!

Alana said...

I won't say "you should have seen Lindsay's snowstorm!" (nor'easter in February of 1969) because that is really dating me (and there have been worse storms since). It doesn't look bad at all, honestly. I'm not familiar with your part of Brooklyn, but someone I know who lives in Gravesend claimed he had two feet of snow covering his front steps. I've seen pictures from Riverhead that are epic. I'm sure the wind caused some crazy drifting. I remember our 32 inch snowfall from last March and oh...I hope never again. I'm also very happy I'm not in Syracuse right now.

bonnie said...

It was a bigger snowstorm than we've had in a while, but in the end manageable, with the right clothes and realistic expectations! :D

TQ would be so excited if I could ever be budged from NYC to somewhere a little less crowded, and every summer when I go do my swim support in Ithaca, I think that that might be someplace I could handle, it's such a neat town and area - but then every winter I see the posts from my friends out there and it reminds me that that might be more winter than this transplant from Hawaii can handle.