Due to snow, its effect on buses, and my Thursday night plans, I couldn't go to work the last two days.
Thursday morning, I left the house at 0515, walking down the hill toward the bus stop; there was less than 1/4" of snow, and it wasn't coming down. While waiting at the stop (where they recently removed the bus shelter, *pout* ), it began to snow lightly. The bus arrived about 10 minutes late, so I wouldn't be able to get my connection, instead needing to wait for the next one. I got off to wait for the next connection about one mile from the stop near my house; there was an inch of snow here. It was now snowing hard, then hailing heavily (tiny hail though, under 1/8 inch), then snowing again; I was thankful for the bus shelter here. My bus was late (or very early), but eventually came. The snow was still coming down, but the accumulation was steadily increasing. At my stop, the Overlake Transit Center, about 6 miles from home, there was four inches. I found out here that all the Microsoft shuttles were being canceled for the day (this is how I usually get to my office when I bus in) and the buses that go even kinda near my office were already canceled. No more northbound or work for me.
I walked over to the other side of the 520 to hope for some southbound bus at the freeway stop. The first bus that came could take me to the Bellevue Transit Center, and from there I could decide if I was going to go home and try to get to
hadrian and Xefyr's later or to just bus there now. I thought about how the snow was and figured I'd just start on my way to their place, since the conditions would get worse before they could get better. Getting into downtown was easy, but getting to West Seattle was ~tough since many roads there were closed and at least two buses had gotten into accidents on the way there already that morning. I ended up getting what should have been a useful bus, but without making an announcement by the driver, it had been decided by Metro Transit, that the route was going to skip nearly all of West Seattle, and just go straight to White Center. The disgruntled passengers figured this out and demanded a stop at Delridge and Genesee to walk up to Alaska Junction. I ended up walking about two miles to
hadrian's house, arriving at 1050. The 5 hour 35 minute trek was generally enjoyable, though cold when not on a bus.
General hangout occurred for the rest of the day with another short snow hike about a mile to and fro dinner at a local bar/restaurant. After dinner we watched "Howl's Moving Castle," which I hadn't yet seen. It was enjoyable with some minor similarities to "Kiki's Delivery Service." It probably helped that I had low expectations (I found "Spirited Away" to be thoroughly boring, unlike every other Miyazaki film I've seen).
I woke up early hoping to bus over to work, but some of the buses weren't running, and the shuttles were down again, so I sent a "fuck work--it's snowing" email, and went back to sleep on the couch. Xefyr's buses were running, so he went to work. I ran some errands with
hadrian and then went to the Junction to get a bus home (another ~3 miles of walking in the snow). I had left her house at 1500, and through much lucky timing between three buses, I arrived at the door of my house at exactly 1700.
I made a simple but hearty dinner for
lalabob11,
two_pi_r, and I, and we've been vegging on the couches for the evening. We were supposed to go to a party tonight, but it was postponed until next Friday because of the snow. One cool thing about the postponing is that
latenightparty can join us at the party next weekend. :)
Tomorrow we're heading over to Bremerton, weather permitting, for a holiday feast and, probably, gaming party that some friends are throwing. Except for the cost of the three pairs of snow chains I want to buy tomorrow, I expect that this accidental four day weekend will overall be awesome since it's been that way so far.
Life is pretty good right now.