Caught in the Grip

Hey, Y'all,
Yeah, you're wondering (I hope) "caught in the grip of what?". Well, actually all of north Texas is caught in the grip of winter, aka cold below freezing temperatures accompanied by ice or vice versa. Monday evening we had sleet, rain, snow and ice. I have been watching cars sliding sideways on freeways, semi's jackknifed on the freeways, and all the accompanying troubles presented by icy highways. Many of the motorists are having as much difficulty getting through the neighborhoods to the freeways, as they do on the freeways. Beginning on late Monday night we have had below freezing temperatures and will have until on Friday. The wind chill factor is below zero even as I write. One would almost think I never left Tennessee, because this is the kind of stuff that happens there.

Beginning this morning early, rolling electricity outages are in place for Texas. This means that you could all at once lose your electricity in your home until they turn it back on. It is only supposed to last from 15 minutes to 45 minutes, but I heard on tevee, people were contacting the tevee station that they had been without for more than an hour and a half. Mine went off this morning at 8:45 (just about when I was going to get up and have breakfast), and didn't come back on for half an hour.
This means that traffic lights can go off at any time, also the trains are being made late and not running on time. They can be turned off several times in a neighborhood. It may be turned off again several times here today. The Cowboy Stadium is exempt from being turned off (of course), even though it uses power equivalent to a mid sized city.

On Monday, at the grocery store, I bought some fresh blueberries, and when I did get up, I decided to make some fresh blueberry pancakes to go with my egg and lonely thin piece of sausage, and hot coffee. Yum! They were really delish!

Going to make me some vegetable beef soup for later today and have some hot french bread to go with it. Sound good? Carol and Daryl came over last night and brought some Pasta Fagiouli (sp?) and cornbread for our supper, then had some left over carrot cake that I had here for our dessert. I really enjoyed the visit and the meal.

I intend to stay warm today. My electric blanket really feels good to my little body each night. The temperatures are not supposed to be above freezing before Friday and then, only barely. I know it is really hampering the Super Bowl activities to a degree. OOPS... too bad....

Speaking once again of low temperatures outside, I have to keep my kitchen faucet dripping so that the pipes don't freeze, since the houses here are built on concrete slabs and no crawl space to keep pipes warm.

DFW airport is having difficulties as well, with many flights cancelled, both coming in and departing. Of course, all the schools systems are closed down (hmm, sounds like East TN again. ha)

Well, folks, that is about it for today. This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off for today. Much love to each of you, my friends/family. More later. Bye for now. Keep warm!