In the Eye of the Storm: A Firsthand Account of the Great and Terrible Destruction Wrought Upon Us in the Second City

Chicago Blizzard, February 2011

It’s seven minutes until 3PM on February 1^st, 2011. As Robert pointed out, there’s a certain irony in the fact that on day one of Black History Month there is a massive white out panning across a third of the country. Or maybe that’s racism and not irony, but you get the idea.

This epic really began on Sunday night, as I noticed the facebook status of one of my fellow bridesmaids from Sydnie’s wedding, which said, “If there was ever a time for a meteorologist to be wrong, this is it ... They are calling for 24 inches of snow by Wed afternoon. Shoot.Me.Now” Knowing that she lives somewhere in the general vicinity of this fine city of Chicago of which I have so recently become a proud resident, I did a little digging on the topic. Which means I looked it up on weather.com. Sure enough, 18-24 inches of snow were expected in our quaint little town.

I do not have a normal reaction to that kind of news. Instead of hoping for a snow day or grumbling about the pain-in-the-ass that is attempting to leave the house once snow gets deeper than four inches, I grew excited. I love inclement weather in general, and though school got cancelled several times during my time in Columbus at The Ohio State University, it never really felt validated, given that the snow never went beyond the eight-inch mark on those occasions. Indeed, on one, all we had was an inch of ice. Having grown up on the banks of the god-forsaken Lake Erie, I was prepared for conditions to get a lot worse than that before anything would get cancelled.

Chicago, I knew, would deliver. Chicago is not a city of exaggerations. Chicago is a city of truths, they are just ridiculous truths. The home of gangsters, and corrupt politicians, and gang wars and really cheap liquor (compared to Ohio, anyway). If Chicagoans were buckling down for the storm of the decade- or perhaps even half-century- then I was prepared to buckle down with them, or God have the storm take me with it.

Never one to pass up on an opportunity to share my hilarity with the rest of the world, I made a terribly trendy Facebook status that night, “White Death! T-minus 36 hours! Hide yo' kids and hide yo' wife because apparently Snowpocalypse is upon us starting Tuesday.” Yes, I know, it’s little wonder I haven’t started working for Cracked yet. I went to sleep that night, a bit excited, but mostly dreading the fact that I hadn’t done any of my Cell Bio homework, which was due at 4 pm the next day.

So it’s Monday morning (no particularly weird dreams) and I wake up, and I do my Cell Bio, and I mentally prepare for getting margaritas with Caitlin and Michelle and Elaine (what can I say, I need things to look forward to). In lab I brought the cookies I had baked out of procrastination the night before (on my beautiful new KitchenAid) in order to make people like me. I find that baked goods are an excellent way into the hearts of our fellow man.

Eventually, as I am wont to do each and every afternoon, I took the ca. 40 minute bus ride over to Evanston Campus, where Dr. Gregory Beitel teaches me about the wonders of Cell Biology. (That’s only partially sarcastic, I do enjoy the class) In the meantime, both Michelle and Caitlin cancelled on margs, and since last time I had gone out just with Elaine to drink, we’d been kicked out of the bar (that was Friday night- another story for another time), it seemed appropriate to cancel. Plus in class I had found a link to this: http://lenkendall.posterous.com/the-very-clever-designerdanb-created-a-t-shir which proves my genius from the night before had been stolen. I had to hold someone culpable.

And so, with White Death imminent upon the city, I set forth on the Purple Line home, though not before checking CTA train tracker and noting that while four trains were heading, 3 minutes apart, to Linden, only one was heading out to Howard, 12 minutes after we got to the station.