#ygkice

YGK Ice Storm 2013
Originally uploaded by Julep67

So we had a little bit of freezing rain over the weekend. By a little bit, I mean, over 50 hours of the stuff.

It fell gradually, started on Friday morning, ended sometime on Sunday. On Saturday evening, I proposed a new drinking game to my friends on Facebook: “Okay kids, suggesting a drinking game for tonight: drink every time someone on the weather network says accretion!” Not sure how many actually participated but a low player turnout could be directly related to a lack of cable television, or even electricity at that point. Accretion was the word of the weekend.

Over the past few days, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the ice storm that hit Kingston in 1998. At that time, I lost my power for a week. I had friends staying with me for the first few days and once they left for warmer places, I packed up and moved in with my parents. This time, I kept an eye on power outages via the Hydro One app on my iPad. Fortunately, while there were problems all around us, we were warm and bright all weekend.

Seeing the photos coming out of Toronto this morning, it looks a lot like I remember Kingston looking in January 1998. A number of people I know gave birth to “Ice Storm Babies” in the summer/fall of 1998. Can’t help but wonder how many Ice Storm Babies will be born in Toronto later on in 2014.

There is still a buttload of ice on our trees and on the lines around our neighbourhood. I wouldn’t say we are out of the woods yet. Mark’s out at work today and I worry. He’s in a small car, driving folks around on side streets which likely haven’t seen a sander in days. I’m sending good thoughts his way and hoping that will help.

I’ll send them off to you all as well. Stay safe folks, keep warm and dry!

memory lane

I think Roddy Frame was onto something when he said, "the closest thing to heaven is to rock'n'roll."

Happy Saturday kids.