Ice Storm Hits OKC and Makes For A Quiet Thunder Game

Greetings from OKC where the current temperature is 8F. We are in day 3 of our winter storm however there is hope as we aren't expecting any more precipitation and the high temperature is going to be around 35 today, 45 tomorrow and then into the 50s and possibly 60 by the weekend. We have had over 1.5" of sleet, ice and snow over the last few days which have brought the city to a halt.

Monday was one of the more interesting basketball games I have ever worked as we had a nice ice storm earlier that morning. The temperature that day was in the 20s and yet somehow it rained (I always grew up thinking that any precip on a below freezing day would fall from the sky in the form of large white flakes called "snow"). Of course as soon as the rain hit it froze over so sidewalks and roads were icy. I knew it was going to be an interesting day when I took a tumble walking out to my car. Walking was worse than driving since no one puts salt on the sidewalks. I heard on the news that over 150 people needed ambulance assistance around town due to pedistrian accidents and one of the local postal workers is intensive care after she fell on a sidewalk while delivering mail. This stuff is no joke.

I drove to the Ford Center on Monday at around 1:00 and was surprised that the freeway wasn't that bad. A large part of that had to do with the fact that there weren't a lot of cars out by that time so travel wasn't bad as long as I didn't go faster than 45 MPH and kept my distance from other vehicles. The worst part was walking the 2 blocks from my car to the Ford Center as I felt I was going to fall again with every step. A few employees started calling me to let me know they couldn't make it which really stressed me out since we were giving out roses and mini-banners to the fans entering the game as well as our usual game night rosters. Turned out I wasn't alone as many of the other employees around the Ford Center didn't make it in either and neither did many of the fans. We ended up having less than 5,000 people show up for the game (building holds 19,000 and is usually filled mostly to capacity). In the first quarter we moved the fans that were sitting in the upper bowl down to the lower bowl and there were still plenty of seats. I tried to show it in a picture but my camera flash isn't very good. The building felt very quiet but the show must go on and the Thunder beat the Nets for our 10th win of the season.
Yesterday we had a layer of snow come down which made for easier walking conditions but driving still wasn't ideal so I was like a lot of people and didn't even leave home (I did walk over to the apartment office to get my mail but figured why drive if you don't need to). I'm getting ready to head into work in a little while today and hope that things are better as we haven't had any new precip.

Changing directions, I went to the birthday party of my friend/co-worker Jasmine on Sunday night. We went to a trendy bowling alley called Red Pin where 17 of us had dinner and then bowled a game on 2 lanes. It takes a while to get a game of bowling in when 8 bowlers are on one lane and 9 on the other and they charged us individually by the minute (30 minute increments) so it was a pricy bowling game. We did have a great time though.

Friday night I went to a local bar to watch my buddy Courtney's band play. He is the drummer in a jazz band and figured I should include a picture of him here.

Super Bowl is 4 days away. GO CARDINALS!!