Ice ice baby

I hate ice. There's plenty of it out there right now.

Last night was a fun ride home from work. Icy snow had been gently falling much of the afternoon, covering the roads and our cars with a layer of precipitation that was at once gritty and slippery. I left work early in the hopes of getting home sometime before midnight. I had to stop at the Scranton Post Office in the Steamtown Mall - this is a super-Post Office that is open seven days a week and stays open until 9:00 on weeknights. (Most Post Offices, like most banks, are designed to deal only with the unemployed, since they generally close before most people get out of work each day.) It was good that I was already planning to get off in Scranton, because 81 South was a parking lot beyond that point.

I did my business at the post office - relaying some stuff to a friend overseas and buying some Christmas stamps. (No Christmas stamps were available on the racks, but they did have some behind the counter. They had plenty of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa stamps on the racks, and I almost bought these until I was able to get my hands on the Christmas ones that they had stashed. They also had, for some reason, Eid stamps. Eid is the holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Why these stamps were out now is a little confusing, since Ramadan ended for 2005 at the beginning of November, and the next Eid will be the third week of October.) I then took a semi-major road - Route 11 - to get to my cousin's house to pick up my aunt. By this time the roads were quite bad, and we decided to continue home along Route 11 until we could see that 81 was clear. We drove a few miles in second gear with the overdrive switched off at speeds under 35 mph until we got to an on-ramp that had a clear view of traffic moving south along 81. We got back on 81 just past Moosic and rode it for a few miles until we spotted another traffic jam that started about 100 yards after the Pittston exit. We saw this before we got to the Pittston exit and were able to take the off-ramp to get onto Route 315. We followed this until after it became Route 309 in Wilkes-Barre and then got back on 81 for about a quarter of a mile to the Nanticoke / Route 29 exit.

Roads were crap the whole way, but my little car and my mad driving skillz got us through. I shoveled another inch of slushy snow when I got home and then spread a lot of salt in preparation for the freezing rain that would soon follow.

Now the roads are covered with ice. I'm hoping they'll be treated before I head out to work. Both tonight's Blue Sundaze concert and tomorrow's cookie baking party are a little iffy at the moment. We'll have to see what the weather brings later today.