Yesterday, on the way home from our last meet-up with friends before our flight out this morning, we stopped by the local Safeway to buy all the makings of decadence. Ah, what would that be? The stuff needed to bake chocolate chip peanut butter cookies and walnut fudge brownies. Among the best things in life. Especially when we can find yummy dairy-free Guittard chocolate chips. Yes, we bought Guittard chips. It was raining when we left Gaithersburg; sleet by the time we arrived at the grocery in Potomac; the snow was covering the ice with a pretty thick dusting by the time we arrived home at Monica’s house.

The tempo of the snow falling increased and the radio announced that people were abandoning their cars on the Capital Beltway. I baked cookies while David and Sarah kept their noses buried in their respective computers. The lights flickered frequently enough for us to get out a flashlight as well as find the candles and matches. Sarah told us about last year’s big storm and how they lost power during it. Great. Softball practice was canceled–no kidding.

Then we had a big “BOOM!” bang out back along with a blue-white flash of light and the power blacked out for a few seconds. Long enough for us to think that we’d lost power. Ah, but it was just a teaser and the power returned. Sigh. Good. As it turns out, there’s a transformer down the way that makes a habit of flashing light and big noises during storms. All part of normal storm behavior around here. About 10 minutes later, I heard a crack…craaaaaack…wooooosh…followed by a house-shaking and thunderous rumble. It sounded like a huge tree had fallen on the house but as it turned out (thank goodness) nothing so grand–it was simply half of a normal-sized tree. Luckily the power stayed with us.

David went outside to shovel snow and I continued on into making salad and chicken for dinner. Cooking is always a good diversion for worry. Monica and Bob eventually made their separate ways home. Monica and David finishing up the shoveling in the falling snow and rearranging the cars at the bottom of the driveway hill so we could all leave in the morning. While we watched a DVD, our airline called to let us know our flight was canceled.

And now we sit here looking at the lovely snow outside and enjoying our winter interlude.

With a laundry list of “things to do” David and I returned to Washington DC this week to…get them done! Good trip so far with medical check ups and short business meetings and wonderful opportunities to catch up with friends.

We left Mahdee on a mooring in the Fiddler’s Cove Marina. We have friends who will keep an eye on her but still…We are seldom away from Mahdee for even a day or two. We’ve been gone since 3 am Tuesday morning and already I’m worried–is everything good back on Mahdee? Is she behaving? Is she getting taken advantage of by the Osprey that often vacations aboard her tall mainmast when we visit Fiddler’s Cove? That durn osprey makes a mess. You’ve heard the phrase “its a dog-eat-dog world” but really, I’ll say it’s a bird-eat-bird world! When one of these birds of prey decides to visit us, we know that we’ll have bird-parts strewn about the deck (yuck!) from the osprey dinner party.

The logistics of getting from boat to airport for an early flight are interesting. We rowed in from the mooring at 3:30 am. Travel bags, a bag of trash, life vests, pump for the dingy–all the trappings of transport…The moon was still up, bright and lighting the calm winter night. It actually was a glorious row and if we hadn’t been on a time schedule, I would have enjoyed drifting about a bit in the small dingy enjoying the quiet night. After the row, we had to deflate the Tinker (since there’s no place to store the boat at the marina while we’re gone) and stash the dingy in back of the car. This is when I can be glad that we’re driving Wesley with the nice big hatchback. Transport the dingy up to the car in a dock cart, stash it and then change out of our clothes (now salty and damp from dealing with the Tinker) into decent travel clothing. From there, we drove to the airport where David dropped me and the luggage.

He then parked the car in our favorite free public parking lot on Shelter Island where our homeless friend, Chuck, keeps an eye on things while we’re gone. David had a 5:15 am date with a cab to bring him back to the airport on Harbor Island. It went very smoothly. We were soon on the 7 am Southwest Airlines flight to BWI. A rental car and 6 hours later we were in heaven: sitting in the home of close friends petting their four dogs, two cats and enjoying talking to our favorite teenager, Sarah, now 16, about sailing, gymnastics, and SAT exams (coming up on Saturday!).

The past two days have been productive and enjoyable. More on that later.