February Update

We are staying really busy these days. Christopher's job always keeps him hopping - he's finally getting a little bit of reprieve after the excitement of the snow and lots of extra hours of shoveling and plowing at his sites.

I successfully defended my MPH project proposal last week, and am in the process of finishing the IRB application. The IRB (Institutional Research Board) at UMD is tasked with making sure that research of any kind done by anyone affiliated with UMD is done ethically and responsibly.

They take their responsibility very seriously (as they should) - and that means that the application process is pretty intense. My project deals mostly with data analysis and mapping, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting approval from the IRB. That is what I am hoping anyway.

Yesterday Jackson had a bit of a stomach ache. He consoled himself by laying on our bed, which had been stripped so that I could wash the sheets. Enjoy this pic of our big baby.

Snowpocalypse!

Fire hydrant and snow drift.
Abbi sporting her winter coat.
Abbi looking cute in the kitchen.
Honda. We can only see it because CDW cleared it off after the first storm.
This is how they are hauling away the big drifts in Baltimore. The city got a special permit to dump the snow into the harbor.
Lee Street, where my car was parked. It still doesn't look much better.
Honda - back and side view.

It has been an exciting few weeks here on the east coast. I was so worried that I would miss big snow while I was in India - turns out there was no reason for me to worry. This February saw the largest snow amounts ever here in Charm City - and while the 2003 President's Day storm remains the largest single storm on record, the Snowpocalypse storms (February 5 & 9, 2010) of 2010 set lots of records of their own.

During the storm we spent lots of time hunkered down here at the house, building fires and drinking nutty Irishmen, and watching Madmen (we only have 3 episodes of season 3 left!). We drove to the gym on Wednesday - oops, we didn't know that Baltimore was in a Phase 3 snow emergency which means that you aren't allowed to drive. We had a great workout though!

Tonite we dug out my car. Discovery - dead battery. Our neighbor had jumper cables handy, so once we had the Honda charged up and dug out we had to get it up Lee Street. This was a significant challenge as Lee Street hasn't seen a plough . . . in many days. Tomorrow is back to real life with a full work week, my project defense (which was delayed on account of the snow), papers to grade . . . blah blah blah.

I hope you enjoy the few picts we managed to take. We didn't get much footage of the actual blizzard because it was hard to balance on the ice with three dogs, see in a blizzard, and take a good photo . . .