What an Ice Storm Can Do (...and how 36 hours without the internet forces one to play catch up for the week)

So, that snow/ice storm that hit a good 3/4 of the country this past week was quite something, wasn't it? Geez. I don't know of the exact totals, but I think I heard Chicago got close to 2 feet, parts of Indiana and Michigan got over a food, Nebraska received a good 9''. Even Dallas is icy if that tells a person anything.

Right here in Columbus, Ohio, we didn't get much snow accumulation, maybe 1-3''. However, we got almost a full inch of ice accumulation between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Upon looking outside Wednesday morning, the streets looked more like an extended, but narrow ice skating rink than actual streets. This resulted in quite the fun evening, well, next 36 hours to be more precise.

I'm not exaggerating here. The power went out between 15 and 20 times from 8:30 pm Tuesday evening (EST) to 8:30 am Wednesday morning (EST). I've experienced a couple power outages in a 24-hour period, maybe three max, but 15-20? That was a tad on the insane side.

Of course, with the multiple power outages, we lost internet and cable access for approximately 36 hours. That was fun. It's amazing how much I depend on this darn thing (Internet), as I do my work through it, communicate with friends and family very regularly, read the news from a few different sources (or as Sarah Palin might suggest, "All of 'em."), etc. I could do without cable for a few days, but not the internet. When we had access again Thursday morning, I went from two e-mails on Tuesday afternoon to 47 on Thursday morning. It's quite amazing how far behind one can get on e-mails and work in general, after missing just 24-36 hours. One would think, "Eh, that's just a day's worth or so. It won't be too bad." Yeah, well, I've been having to play catch up ever since and I'm finally to the point where I can say I'm about caught up, but even on Saturday afternoon, I'm not all the way there yet.

Hopefully the groundhog was right and we have an early spring, because I can't say between the cold weather and the ice storm this past week, that I'm enjoying this winter very much. Come on Punxatawney Phil, follow through for us!