No Job Joy #69 Snow Days

When you live in Dallas and you wake up to 2 inches of snow and more is on the way, things start to shut down. Since my phone interview had been canceled, I had nothing I had to do so I decided to take a snow day.  A day to do things that I truly love but never make enough time for was what this day was all about.

My snow day started with two hours of taking photographs.  I explored an area that I had been dozens of times but never ventured off the path.  Today, I took the path not traveled. What I ended up with can be seen here. Snow Day photos  Being in Dallas yet not seeing anything that resembles one of the largest cities in America was amazing.  I felt as if I was back in Iowa for the first snow of the year. The large flakes, the silence of being in nature and the beauty of fresh snow.

After getting lunch and drying off, I went to pick up my kids from school.  Another Dad and I carefully set up an ambush for the kids as they got out of school for a three day weekend.  What followed was a 20 minute melee where everyone was covered with snow and exhausted from throwing and dodging flying snow. The joy of the kids being free to be kids in weather that they almost never see was inspiring. The amazing thing was that the snow was falling as hard as ever.

That night we had some small power outages as the trees started to feel the strain of the beauty that was piling on them and they came down taking power lines with them.  Fortunately we had power all night.  With me setting my alarm for a pre-dawn wake up call to capture the snow after it stopped. As we went to sleep we could see the brightness of the city lights reflecting off the clouds and snow making a strange glow everywhere.

As I drove around making photographs I had to avoid trees and branches that had fallen overnight.  Making sure to pay attention to the stop lights that were out. This really wasn't a big problem as few people were out before daylight. Each time I set up my tripod I was amazed at how much snow we had.  I couldn't remember the last time I had seen this much snow. Since there was no wind as the snow came down there were no drifts and the snow was a smooth layer of white icing on the world.

As I was revelling in the beauty of what seemed like a foreign land,  the silence was occasionally broken by the sad sound of branched straining and breaking under the weight of the snow. Just as anyone who was with out power for more than a short time can attest, beauty can have a price.

After almost three hours of photographing the winter wonderland, my wife called and the power had gone out.  Not that there was much I could do but I had the only camera that was charged so she has no way to capture the kids frolicking in the almost foot of snow.  When I got home I found kids, dogs and adults playing in the snow along with a new snow man my wife had built.

The rest of the day was spent wondering when the power would come back on and trying to dry clothes by the gas fireplace. When the power did finally come back on here is what I found I had created earlier that day. Wonderful memories of a snow day.

The reason that this is a no job joy is that I had no where to be, nothing I HAD to do and was able to enjoy the snow day as if I were a kid again and create something I can share with others in my photographs.