Another great photo slideshow site

While sitting in my house Saturday watching the snow come down yet again I found this photo slideshow site. Unlike PhotoBucket Remixes or slideshows WordPress allows users to embed Slide.com’s slideshows into blogger’s posts. What’s cool about this slideshow program is you can add in a video from YouTube instead of just music.

One week of snow and freezing weather for Portland

It snowed all day yesterday. I had to cancel my haircut and color appointment yesterday morning. That did not make me happy. 36_1_2811

My daughter and her husband went out and about in her Nissan Xterra SUV. I called her to stop and pick me up a good hamburger on the way home since I am NOT leaving my house with this crap out there. 23 degrees with light freezing rain coming down now with about 1/2 inch predicted for today.

Oh get this… the city or county has a gravel truck. My street is the street behind the emergency operations center about a mile away. The gravel truck uses my street to get to and from the gravel yard wherever that is. But do you think that they drop any gravel on my street? Heck no! It doesn’t matter if they did I am not walking on a slick driveway to stand there to scrap all of the snow of my car. So it really doesn’t matter but it is the point of the matter that ticks me off.
Please read Trauma: the Drama’s post from yesterday “Cabin Fever” about her week, Portland and snow. It is hysterical.

I would like to take better photos but I am not walking out in the snow to do so.

Saturday around 1:00PM

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Saturday 5:00PM

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Today around 7:45AM

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I am sick of this crappy weather!

It snowed on and off most of the day. Then late afternoon the temperature did actually get above freezing and the precipitation was just rain. However, the weather forecast for tonight calls for below freezing temps and more snow through Thursday. That is to be followed by snow this coming weekend. I heard on the local evening news that this will be the longest cold spell on record for Portland since 1978. Below freezing temps are forecasted through at least Christmas Day. I better be able to get to the airport the day after Christmas for my 6:00 AM flight to Cancun!

Thank goodness I brought my work laptop home last Friday so I can work virtually via VPN and have all of the amenities of being on the corporate LAN. I have a feature on my work voicemail box that I can program for callers to push one to be redirected to a number where I can be reached. That along with my cell and Instant Messaging it is just like I am sitting at my desk in my office 8 miles away. 6 of the 8 sales teams that I support are remote anyway. They are located anywhere from 13 miles away to Idaho, Utah and Montana. So it is no big deal that I am not in the office downtown Portland.

I am not taking any chances with walking on icy pavement and ending up falling and re-injuring my knee. My daughter Tara called me last night to see if I wanted to go out to dinner with her and Kelly. I said no because I did not want to walk down my icy driveway and maneuver through an icy restaurant parking lot. Tara said that she thought she should call me and ask since she had just heard a new’s story about Loaves and Fishes and how their need increases with the elderly during bad weather. Yes, thanks a lot Tara! Anyway I gave her instructions to stop at one of my favorite Mexican places on the way home to pick me up a green chili burrito which actually will be my dinner tonight.  Tara did tell me that it was a good thing that I did not go with them since she nearly fell on her ass in the restaurant’s parking lot.

Another Portland blogger feels the same way I do. Yes, maybe we are wimps but we do not get this shit very often. The thing that alot of people do not realize is that Portland is situated at the foothills of a major mountain range, The Cascades. You could compare some of the hills in town to what you would see in places like San Franciso or Seattle. Many streets are closed becasue of safety issues.  A friend of mine from Iowa visited me last summer and was amazed that there were mountains in the city. Excuse me but those are only buttes or hills not mountains. Top that off with the fact then when we get snow it always freezes over. Tomorrow morning’s commute will be a nightmare.

SNOW! A rare site in PDX

Yesterday I wrote about my daughter’s snowmen Christmas decorations. Today she could go outside and build a snowman. The weather forecast was for snow yesterday but it did not start snowing until about 7:30 AM today. The snow has been coming down pretty steady since then. In just a few hours I have about 1 1/2 inches in my yard.

Portland only gets snow once a year if that. So it is big news for the local news stations. Storm coverage gets pretty ridiculous with reporters standing on the side of the roads and sliding down hills to show how slippery the streets are.

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Soon I will be sitting on my favorite beach on Isla Mujeres. I can’t wait!

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