Today is our third snow day here in Atlanta. As I’ve written this blog, they have called school for tomorrow too. Crazy!

I am bummed that we missed the last three days of our Jan-term class. I was really enjoying the visiting professor from Germany, Martin Tamcke, and would have liked a bit more closure on the topic. We’d been discussing the challenge of Turkish Muslim immigration in Germany to interfaith/intercultural dialogue. I still have to write a paper, so if I glean anything profound in the process, I’ll be sure to share on the blog.

The snow. Sunday night we got 3-6 inches of snow, followed by freezing rain. Monday night there was a bit more icy precipitation. Tuesday it melted off some, but got cold at night and froze back over. Today the sun came out and it melted a very little bit, but will get down to 18 degrees tonight, so I’m guessing the road will slicken back up.

The weather thrust us into an unexpected and mandatory Sabbath. Spending all day Monday in my pajamas watching movies was fine, but yesterday I decided I needed to burn some energy and go for a walk. Still a restful time- I so appreciated the beauty! Here are a few pictures of my neighborhood on day 2 of Snowpocalypse…

beautiful icy berries

me, very chilly, about to cross a very slick bridge

what are these little doo-hickeys called?

my street

893… the place to be!

Today I actually ventured out in my car. I walked up my yard (a hill, as seen in the picture above) to start my car and let it defrost a bit. On my way back down to the house, I did some unintentional surfing. The ice on top of the snow is tricky… The incident in my front yard almost deterred me from leaving at all. But, I made it back to my car to clean off the windshield with a wooden spoon (because of course I don’t have an ice scraper here in Atlanta) and started down the road at 7 mph.

My road is still covered in “wintry mix.” I absolutely could have ice skated to the end faster than I drove. Out on the main road, there was quite a bit of slush, but clear tracks from cars gone before that felt pretty safe to drive in. I made it to Publix, got ingredients for cupcakes and grilled cheese sandwiches, picked up Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince from Blockbuster, and made it back home without dying (or fishtailing in my car). Success. Here is a picture of the cupcake creations from this afternoon.

I used a Betty Crocker “yellow cake butter recipe” mix and homemade chocolate buttercream frosting. I used this frosting recipe. They didn’t all turn out beautifully, but I had fun playing with the frosting kit I got for Christmas.