dead trees and swollen rivers

This winter has been pretty tame compared to our first winter here. We've had three major snow falls, but all the big storms that keep pummeling the East Coast have been staying to the south of us.

This week, instead of the snow that everyone else was getting, we had five days of rain. (Ah yes, that's the Massachusetts I've grown used to.) We live up on a hill, but the road in front of us has been flooded on either side of the driveway (Awesome!). One side because of the runoff from our complex, and the other side because some beavers have damed off the marsh there, so anytime it looks like rain it floods over the road.

Thursday night was just -wicked-. The winds were shaking our apartment, and the zombie tree uprising of 2010 was upon us. We had rolling brown outs for awhile, until we finally lost power. awesome.  One of the things I've noticed about the East Coast is they don't do storms well. It seems like if it looks a little wonky out, people lose power. Last winter, they had contractors from all over the US to try to restore power after some weak ice storms. I think the only time we lost power for any significant length of time in Michigan was when the power grid from New York went down and we were without power for a few days a few years ago. East Coast is wimpy.

Anyway. The alarm system in our building went off all night to let us know that we had no power, which was comforting. We got power back as I was leaving for work Friday morning. The drive to work was weird- it smelled like wood shavings everywhere. There were trees down everywhere- in houses, garages, on cars, across the road. It was like a really sad uprising where the trees didn't realize they wouldn't be able to do much but fall.

It's still pretty decent out, but I'm not looking forward to another year of rain. I can't wait till we can move away from here. I try not to think about it much- I think people I don't know still know I hate Massachusetts. There's no point in repeating it. But I really, really can't wait until we figure out where we are going and get there.