It's a Blizzard here in the Dakotas!

I'm finally back from my trek into town, which began Wednesday night. I had a hearing scheduled for Thursday morning, and of all days, G-d decided to send the biggest snow storm yet this year on the only day I absolutely need to go into town this month. Everyone who knew I had this hearing in town on Thursday proceeded to call me Wednesday night to inform me "There's a huge storm coming, you'd better not go. It's gonna be a big one, you betcha."



Being a true blue North Dakotan since birth, I usually drive no matter the road conditions. Up here you have people who won't drive in the winter, period, and then you have those who, like me, pretty much drive even if the road is completely covered in ice with a foot of compacted snow. Before I had Kaydn Rye, I'd usually end up going about 50 to 60 miles an hour on said roads, but now, I drive about 25 miles an hour. It takes every fiber of my being to only go 50 miles an hour, let alone 25 miles an hour. But I guess I don't want to send us careening to our deaths, and Gertie (our old chinese man, see here) doesn't wear a seatbelt, so I tend to drive like a grandma when it's icy. Actually, I think I had a few grandmas pass me this morning on the way home.

So anyway, I had the hearing on Thursday morning in Minot, so I made the 55 mile trek into town on Wednesday night, before the storm hit, and I stayed with my aunt who only lives 10 miles from town. On Thursday morning, it was rough and I thought for sure they'd cancel the hearing, the debtor's attorney was coming all the way from Bismarck for pete's sake. (If you don't watch the weather channel religiously like my grandparents, you probably don't know that the weather was so bad in Bismarck that the weather channel was actually in Bismarck yesterday.) So I called the attorney's secretary and she assured me that he left at 6 o'clock that morning to get there in time for our 10 o'clock hearing (it usually takes about an hour and a half to get to Minot from Bismarck) and that the hearing was still on.

So I made the 10 mile trek into town on roads that were pure ice, in a blizzard, going about 25 miles an hour. I finally made it town just in time for the hearing, and when I walked in to the federal building to go through security, the security lady says to me, "What can I do for you?"

I tell her I'm here for a creditor's meeting and she says, "Oh, that was cancelled. The other attorney didn't make it up here."

I about had a cow right there. But I figured, heck I'm in town, so I may as well get some groceries, do some curtain shopping, you know, make a day of it.

So in a blizzard, I went grocery shopping, went to Hobby Lobby, got some more paint for the living room, went to the mall, went to Wal-Mart, visited a friend's house, you name it, we did it.

Actually, blizzards are always fun in Minot because you see all the out-of-state people in their little toyotas peeling out on the road trying to get through the stop lights. Poor guys. The moral of that story is to make sure you have plenty of passengers with you (who aren't three-years-old and who aren't canines) to make sure you have plenty of man power to push you through the stop light. Otherwise you'll land some farmer behind you in a dualy pickup in a really bad mood.

And despite my best efforts, I didn't make it home last night either, and Kaydn Rye was so tired of being out in the storm that he demanded we spend another night at my aunt's house.

But we made it home this morning.

Oh, and this is good stuff here from the weather channel.

The guy's in Bismarck, which was pretty much shut down this morning. Yeah, the entire town was shut down. Interstate 94 was even shut down. When a town closes down around here, you know that it's a blizzard worthy of applause. But in any other place in the world, nobody would go anywhere in such a blizzard. Here, it's deer and shopping season, so the eskimoes around here either hit the mall or the snow covered hills to shoot at deer all weekend. The weather channel anchor actually says something in the video about the number of people that are out driving around in the aftermath of a blizzard. And then the guy says something about how the wind is still a little frisky, I think. Frisky?




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