Quotation Mark Mondays: Catching up

Christmas, the end of the semester, and a whole bunch of other stuff have put us a bit behind lately. We promise to add some photos soon, but in the meantime enjoy Mark's latest quotable quotes.

This weekend, Mark got to meet Casey Crosby, a major league baseball player. Before Mark and Matt went up to Casey, Matt had prompted Mark to ask Casey about what team he played for and what position he played so they'd have something to talk about.
Mark: "What team do you play for?"
Casey: "The Tigers."
Mark: "What position do you play?"
Casey: "I'm a pitcher."
Mark: "What's your number?"
Casey: "I'm number 43."
Mark: "What street?"
Matt: "Um, I think he was telling you the number on his jersey, not his house."

(later)
Lynne: "Did you get to meet the baseball player?"
Mark: "Yeah. He doesn't know what street he lives on."

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After Lynne and Matt were singing Santa Claus is coming to town.
"You only have to be good in the months that are close to Christmas, when Santa is really watching."

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While in line to see Santa
Lady in line in front of us to her children: "It might snow this week."
Mark: "No, not until Dec. 21st."
(Because, as Mark pointed out, that's the official first day of winter. So no snow until then.)

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Now, the sentimental one:
"I'm such a good boy because I have a good mommy and daddy."

February: Snowman update

Mark of Fridays: Can't do this in California!

Pssst. Hey kid.

Don't look now, but that snowman ate one of your gloves.

Mark of Fridays: Swow Day!

Hey, he wanted to shovel. We didn't make him.

Bonus Mark: Frosty Lives!

Special thanks to Nana and Bababoo for the snowman kit, and to Winter, for finally supplying the snow.

More pictures from Blizzard 2011

Matt wanted to post a few more pictures of the Great Blizzard of 2011 (aka: SnOMG!, Snowtorious BIG, Snowmaggeddon, Snowmania, Snowtastic) before the whole thing is just a memory.
Right now, the snow is melting like crazy. The pile that Mark is standing on - the one Matt was sure would be there until June - is just about gone. Today, it's about 50 degrees outside.

A few weeks ago, we literally could not get out of the house. Snowed in. Today, we're going outside in short sleeves.

Illinois is weird.

Mark of Fridays: Snow day

If you live here in Illinois, there's not much we can tell you about the Blizzard of 2011. You were there. You saw how bad it was.
If you live somewhere else, well, it was something else. Matt's Minnesota friends would probably scoff, but it's hard to describe how disabling 2 feet of snow in one night can be to a community.

The snow started around 3 p.m. Tuesday. All schools and most businesses had closed early because there was lots of warning.
Lynne and Mark were home by 3:30 p.m. Matt got back around 5 p.m. Early deadlines (so that delivery people could get a head start) made staying at work useless. By 8 p.m., it was snowing hard with - this was a new one - thunder snows. Odd/cool.
At midnight, Matt wandered around a bit outside. The snow was swirling in the wind, creating huge drifts and giant lulls. The ground was almost bare in one spot, then three feet high a few steps over. Still, Matt went to bed thinking this storm, like many others, wouldn't live up to the hype. But, he was excited to get to work and cover The Big One.
Ha.
When Lynne and Matt woke up Wednesday morning, it had been snowing heavily through the night. Lynne, of course, had a snow day. They had called that on Tuesday. And, seeing the results of the blizzard (snowtastrophe or snowtorious or SNOMG! or snopocalypse, if you prefer) Matt was psyched to go to work. This was real news! He planned to shovel out the CRV, then head into the office.
The first sign that this could be an issue was when he opened the garage. The door kept going up, up, up, up, up but there were no sky. Two feet is a lot of snow.
At 7 a.m. Wednesday, no one else on the block was out yet. (Let the record show that Matt had the first cleared driveway.) The wind was still blowing a bit and a light snow was falling. It was quiet. The street looked amazingly pristine. Only the mailboxes sticking up indicated where the road might be.
Because both cars were parked in the driveway, it was fairly easy to clear. Plus, the snow was light. The street hadn't been plowed yet, but Matt figured he might be able to barrel through to a main road.
Uh, no.

The CRV hit the end of the driveway. And stopped right there. It just wouldn't go back. It became quite clear that this was a special storm and that Matt has really underestimated it.
Matt knew he'd have to wait for a plow to be able to get to work. No problem, right? He headed up to the computer and started emailing and calling sources to see what was going on.
After an hour, he was back outside, helping neighbors clear their driveway. At 10 a.m., still no plow. Matt made some more calls. At 1:30 p.m., still no plow. Matt was getting antsy. It's a point of pride to go to work on days like this. One guy at work tells the story of skiing to the office in the 1979 blizzard. Matt was starting to go stir crazy. Even worse, Matt was now of Diet Coke.
Matt made a snow angel in the road. No plow. By 5 p.m. Matt had written three stories and it was clear he was not getting to the office. He wasn't alone. In an office of about 100 people, 9 made it to work. (And one of those slept there overnight.) Most of the reporting and all of the designing was done remotely. Amazing technology.

The plows finally showed up at 7:15 a.m. Thursday. That's 40 hours after snow started falling before a plow touched Eldorado Lane. I know there's a lot of road to cover, but that seems a bit ludicrous.
After Matt cleared the two foot high, four foot deep pile of snow the plow deposited at the end of the driveway, he finally headed into the office. The pile at the end of the driveway is at least six feet high.
There's some great pictures from the Beacon here. Trib has some amazing photos of Lake Shore Drive.

Now, driving down the street seems like driving through some eery ice castle, with towers of snow piling high on each side of the snow corridor. And the way the wins moved snow was amazing - almost artistic. Some backyards appear to have more than five feet of snow in them. You can see grass in others.

So, Blizzard 2011 is in the books.
The mail never showed up, which made Matt feel better about not getting to the office. (No mail Thursday, either.) And the newspapers that staff worked so hard to put together never showed up Wednesday. Or Thursday.
But, overall, all disasters were averted. Power and heat stayed on. Cars started.No injuries besides Matt's sore back. The dog managed to find a bathroom spot. Mark got to spend the day with Mom and Dad, building a story that he will get sick of hearing. And the Diet Coke has been replenished.
Only one question remains: How many days until pitchers and catchers report?

Rebel weeds in No Man's Lawn

You know how since most people don't have a fence in their front yard, there's really no way to tell exactly where to stop cutting the grass? Instead, you have to just eyeball the property line and base your cut on whether you want to claim a few more feet for your baseball diamond or lose a few feet so you don't have to empty the bag again.

That little imaginary and discretionary strip of grass is No Man's Lawn.

Matt noticed that at Lynne's house there were some weeds growing between her house and the attached house. These were hearty weeds, weeds that broke through cement, weeds on the margins. Matt even thought he saw one of them smoking a cigarette once, or maybe skateboarding. But Matt could never be sure.

And while Lynne and her Bulgarian neighbors weed the heck out of everyplace else, these rebel weeds were left alone. Even as the three mighty weeds grew tall and flowered they remained, untouched. For they grew in No Man's Lawn, on the border of Seagoville and Neighborlonia.

As you can see in the important documentary picture posted above, these weeds even managed to survive into the winter. (Look in the bottom right, covered by a little snow.) Now it appears Mama Nature will be the one who finally settles this battle until next year.

But wait! What's that? A new debate rages!

Who will clear that foot-wide patch of snow between the two attached driveways? Who dares bring a shovel into Snow Man's Land?

Stay tuned for more exciting updates and surveillance photos.