If you're in the central Texas region, you already know what Christmas Eve's been like.  If you aren't from the area - well let me tell you I wish that I'd have been more cautious and had forgone the festivities in the desire for preserving my life.  I did make some concessions; getting my dad to come pick me and my friend up for the drive up to my grandmother's.  You see, day before Christmas Eve my thermometer read around 80, now today - well, yesterday I guess - it snowed most of the day.  I heard we got the equivalent of four inches of snow, however the ground was so warm that for the first like, six hours, the snow just melted instantly.  It took until about 3 or 4pm for it to start sticking, peppering the ground and all with a very thin dusting of white - and it didn't stop until a few hours ago!

I knew I should have stayed at home when at about 4:30pm when my dad's one ton Dodge pick-up truck fishtailed and almost slid into a silly car that thought squeezing by us on the shoulder was a good idea.  It only got worse and the sun wasn't even down yet!

The festivities at my grandmother's house were all sort of rushed; everyone got there and we ate and I started doing dishes. I didn't even finish them! We jump started the present exchange and once that was over we were out of there!  Only to find that 121 was closed off.  We'd run into an issue of closed ramps on the way to my grandmother's place, and it was only worse on the way home.  President GB, 121, the loops (620 & 112), 30 and 35 were all closed off to us and we eventually got squeezed off the highway in downtown Dallas and took side streets I remember driving from when I worked in the area until we got to 35N.  Talk about out of the way!

It was precarious going, most of the time we didn't go faster than 30, we were crammed in like sardines, holding stuff and not daring to breath in case something happened.  I stopped counting how many wrecks we saw and all the cars abandoned in ditches or spun out.  We saw one car skid across four lanes and go straight into the concrete barricades; it was one of those cars that was going far too fast.  At one point over the 183 Trinity River Bridge there were semis stranded there, just spinning, unable to get any kind of traction and everyone just kinda went between them like some strange obstacle course.  Yeah.  We fishtaled and almost hit people, it was crazy.

Getting to my apartment was like saying - hey lets go ice skating! The whole lot is frozen over; my grandmother even fell getting out of the truck to come in.  It was then that I decided that as much fun as it would be to be at my parent's place and get up for breakfast and opening presents - I really did not want to make that drive - so here I am, on my couch, watching White Christmas, with plans to drive to my parents place later once the roads clear and things are safer. 

Merry Christmas - stay safe!