Little victories in the snow

What you see below is a picture of a TimTam. For those who don't know, a TimTam is a little treat from Australia. It's a chocolate covered wafer-like cookie, and there's a traditional way you're supposed to eat one. First, you nibble off the chocolate on opposite corners. Then, you dunk it in your coffee and use it like a straw sucking coffee up into the wafer. Once the coffee hits the wafer, the entire TimTam begins to dissolve from the inside-out. You have to stuff the whole thing in your mouth immediately. It's melt-in-your-mouth goodness! (Yes, I know, the living room in the background is an absolute mess. Please ignore that.)


These things are not easy to come by. Aussie members of our department bring them as treats for lab meetings, and more often than not, the TimTams arrived in care packages from the land down under. Well, last month I found them at a fabric store in town. Random, I know, but what a find! I had one left over, and today was its day. So why am I talking about TimTams in terms of a "little victory in the snow"? Here's why:


Yup, Portland has just been hit by what the weather men are calling the worst storm in 5 to 10 years. We normally don't get much snow here, but the past week or so has been a weather event for the record books. There was an ice storm that shut schools and businesses down for several days last week. Half a block from our house we did a 180 in my car just trying to get off our little street on Tuesday. My PhD qualifier exams were even postponed a few days. Yesterday morning I was supposed to play a disc golf tournament in Estacada. I made it half a block up the street (in the other, flatter direction this time) before my car got stuck on the ice. There was just no safe way to make it to the tournament. Turns out that was a good thing because throughout the day yesterday, Mother Nature dumped anywhere from 6 inches, to over a foot of snow in town. That's on top of ice already up to 3 inches thick on the roads. We live in the hills, and got the worst of it.

In leiu of disc golf, Ryan and I walked to a neighborhood cafe for breakfast. I think I was wearing 5 layers of clothing because the wind chill was so cold. On the walk home, we were crossing a street. It was icy, and I went down about 5 feet from the curb. Ryan was a few steps ahead of me and didn't notice that I had fallen until he turned around a few steps later and saw me sitting on my butt in the road. I landed hard on my hip and my knee. My knee is pretty sore today, so in keeping score, that's Mother Nature: 1, Chris: 0.

But today, I evened the score. My knee hurts, it's bitter cold and windy, and there's a half inch of ice covering every surface out there (that's a picture of me holding a sheet of ice above). But I managed to get up, layer up, walk to the village, buy a nice hot coffee, bring it back to the house, and enjoy it with a Tim Tam, all without taking another digger. Mother nature nature: 1, Chris: 1. It may look like a tie, but I call that a victory.