A Non-Awesome Snow Morning

Yesterday, just before noon, the office of personnel management [OPM] made a very smart move by excusing federal employees 2 hours early from their normal work day. I get to work very early in the mornings, which allowed me to take off and head home about 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm very, very thankful I was able to do that, because I've heard nothing but horror stories of people being stranded on their normal commutes home, taking 8, 10, or even 12 hours. No human being should ever be subject to that kind of roadway torture.  I made it home yesterday before any precipitation began to fall from the sky. Once the snow did start falling hard, I walked over to the store and got ingredients to make chili at home. It was delicious, and you can find the recipe here. Moving on.

My guess is that we got about 8-9 inches of snow last night. I was up late checking the OPM website to see if there were any updates on today's operating status. With no updates late at night, I had no choice but to get to bed in case I had to come into work today. I woke up at 3:00am and there was still no update, when I checked again at 5:00am, I was not so happy with what I saw: 2 hour delayed opening. Usually when I see this, I just head in at my normal time, because it means there will be less traffic on the roads. So I went outside and started the car, came in and got ready, and then headed back out to get all the snow off the car. Once the car was cleared off, I backed out of my driveway, made it about 20 feet, aaaaaand stuck. My car simply cannot make it through anything more than 4 inches of snow. I tried rocking it, and clearing a path little by little, but it was useless. I had no choice, I had to go wake up my roommate. 

He got up, got dressed, and came out to help. At first he just tried pushing but we quickly realized that wasn't going to cut it. So we went and got his Explorer from the driveway, and he just pulled out and drove right around me. I was thinking to myself, 'you gotta be kidding me.' I swear, my next daily driver WILL either be an SUV with 4 wheel drive, or at the least another car with AWD capability. Anyways, he drives right around my stuck car, and backs it up. We attached a tow rope to the front of my car and he pulled me through the remaining 40 or so feet out to a more cleared out area, and it was off to work I go. 

If I wasn't trying to save all my vacation time right now for my upcoming trip to Colorado, I would've just taken unscheduled leave today and skipped work all-together. But Colorado is worth a morning of frustration here. Below are two pictures of my car stuck directly in front of my house. Man, I hope a plow makes it through our neighborhood today. 

Stuck.

View from front door. Yea, I made it real far. 

Oh, and as I was about 5 minutes away from arriving at work, I realized I forgot my dress shirt at home. So yea, I look real professional today. Super. And yes, I wrote this post while at work, because there is no one else in my building, and it appears as though I'm the only one crazy enough to actually attempt going to work today.