Make God Laugh. Tell Him Your Plans.

Well, Rick and Sandy are still stuck in New Jersey. Their rescheduled flight (from Monday to Tuesday) was re-rescheduled. They can't get out until Friday now. They checked all the nearby airports (La Guardia, JFK, Newark, Philly) and nothing was available to carry them to Portland, OR. The earliest was in Pittsburgh and even that was going to be on Thursday.

Terry offered to drive them out there, but Sandy figured she'd lose more work time in the car than it was worth. As a young associate in perhaps Portland's most prestigious divorce law firm, she's got to get those billable hours! Luckily, she can do some work online. Unluckily that doesn't include meeting with clients. She's in a high pressure situation and this storm has really put her against the wall.

Rick? He's an arborist with Asplundh. They do a lot of clearing of trees in power line right of ways...weather permitting. It's raining a lot in Portland area. I don't know how this affects the company's demand on his services, but it ain't divorce law.

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The Mall at Short Hills was going to have a delayed opening on Monday but swiftly changed their mind and remained closed. Something about a "State of Emergency" they didn't understand? As a result, Jess had the day off and, with her regular day off today, she's getting a longer than expected visit with her brother, sister-in-law, and mother.

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Terry will be returning to the Aerie tonight. She says the streets in and around the New York metro area are passable...not great but passable. I think she'll be pleasantly surprised when she crosses the Delaware River this afternoon.

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Here at the Aerie, the winds have slackened and the sun is shining brightly. Although the radio keeps saying it's supposed to be "mostly cloudy with a chance of snow flurries" there's nary a cloud in the sky. The temperatures slowly rose all day Monday from 9 degrees at 7 AM to 19 at 11 PM when I went to bed. It was still 19 this morning but has since climbed into the upper 20s despite the winds still coming out of the north-northwest. The forecast calls for increasing sunshine and rising temperatures through Thursday. It will even get into the mid-30s, or so they say.

Roads around here are snow free. The dirt roads are better than ever now that the snow plows have smoothed them out and the grit trucks have laid down a layer of the black stuff. The paved roads are dry for the most part and just a little wet where wind blown snow has drifted on to the sun warmed surfaces. We only had a couple of inches down in the valley and most of that can be attributed to the lake effect rather than the monster that hit the Mid Atlantic and New England coast.