{the Dempster Dailies}: Playing Catch-Up: Winter 2010

One of the great things about living in a high-rise apartment is the heated garage. San Diegans may wonder what the big deal is; but the difference can be between this:

(Don't you miss my car?) And this:

Can you guess what one of the worst things is? Here's a hint:

January 2010 did not get off to a good start. It was like any other morning -- I was running late. In an effort to save some time, I may have rushed out of my parking spot and in my carelessness (you know where I am going with this), scraped my fender.

If you're wondering why I have these random fender pictures, it really was for good reason; one of the auto body shops I looked into did online estimates and allowed for you to upload pictures of the damage. Fortunately for me, the damage was only scraped paint and no dents. Fast forward a couple of weeks, my car was like new. Old Towne Auto Body & Paint did a fantastic job and were reasonably priced, although it was expensive enough for me to always have my "head in the game" (as my beloved husband would say) when I back out of parking spots.

Do you remember the "Blizzard 2009" post? Well, two months later, we had Blizzard 2010. (Again, mild winters? Riiiiiight.) It started snowing on Friday, February 5:

By Friday evening, it was already accumulating.

By late Saturday morning, it already looked like this:

Knowing that it would continue to snow, Joe and I thought we'd take the opportunity to go to the store, get essentials and check out the area outside the apartment.

Yup, that's Joe!

And when it finally stopped snowing on Sunday morning, we thought we'd take a walk around the neighborhood.

And everywhere we went, there were snowmen!

And while it was great to see the sun and snowmen, nothing made me happier than this:

(Yes, Hilary, I realize I am a dork for saving this. But it was my first snow day -- I was excited!!)

Two days later, we got hit with Winter Blast, Part II.

Fortunately, "Winter Blast, Part II" also brought us "Erin's First Snow Day, Part II." :-)

A week later, Joe and I made our way in to Foggy Bottom in our UMass gear.

To give you an idea of how the excited the Colonials were about this game, I'll share a brief story. We went to a sandwich shop on/near campus 2o minutes before the game when a GW student noticed I was wearing a UMass sweatshirt. He asked if I went there and proceeded to tell us how he was from Amherst, yadda yadda, then he asked, "There's a basketball game tonight?" It shouldn't have surprised us that the inside of the arena looked like this at the start of the game: