Night Snow

I wish I had a really good reason for neglecting my blog the last few weeks besides life, travel and general life busyness, but that's all I have right now!

This year has been different and unpredictable for me. I've been trying to give myself more space and openness and it's taken me in surprising directions at times, but I'm going with it. If you had asked me 6 months ago if I would go to someplace cold and snowy voluntarily in winterish time, I would have though you were just trying to say ridiculous things (I feel weird when people call me Californian, but I have lived here longer than anyplace else at this point, I think... or close to as long as I lived in Texas)... but what do you know? I just spent this last weekend in Chicago where during the second night I was there, we were treated to snow. Luckily I feel like I was pretty well prepared and stayed warm for the most part. I didn't have obligations that made me traipse out into the snow, so for the most part it was a pretty novelty and I wandered until I had enough. I have seen snow before (in Southern California even... just go to the mountains!), but this is the longest I think I just stuck around and was by far the most urban setting I've seen it in. I can see how it would get irritating for extended periods, but for me, I had fun stomping through it and looking at everything in a different way and taking in the various stages of everything taking on a soft, uniform look, at least for a little while right after the snow fell.

Who knows if I will get to the rest of my photos from this Chicago trip as I have such a large backlog in general, but for now, just snow at night....

Christmas trees for sale, with real snow, not the sprayed on fake stuff!

makes me think of the playa at Burning Man...

it's kinda crazy how bright the sky was at night while snowing since everything was all white and reflective...

sounds of winter = scraping of snow shovels on the ground &
people cleaning the ice/snow off their cars.