a beautiful day in the neighborhood

i didn't leave the house today thanks to "the worst storm in years." the 10 o'clock news is on right now and the main story is today's blizzard - which is still going on (blizzard warning for all of eastern nodak). there is a no travel advisory for all of north dakota. they are saying that people who * must * venture out should cover ALL exposed skin - the temperature right now is negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 celsius) but with wind chill it is -38 F (-39 C) - and at this temp, skin can freeze in a matter of minutes. while the snow is dwindling down now (we've gotten a foot of snow in less than 24 hours), the wind is high. since the snow hasn't had time to pack down (partially also because there is no moisture in the air), it is blowing around fiercely.
today has been rather slow. actually, i can't remember most of it. that's what happens when you * can't * go outside. we made fudge, which was good. and i played rummi against my mom. my parents watched football while i napped and then i talked to my friend jen who is home in the states for a few weeks. other than that: uneventful.

the news has compared today's blizzard to those blizzards of the winter of 1996-97. i remember this winter clearly. in jan '97, my appendix ruptured. a story for another time, but i can recall this easily because we could not actually get to the hospital (which is only 5 blocks away) because we were snowed in - even though we live in the middle of the city. i think we had nearly 10 snow days (where we couldn't go to school) that winter - usually 2 was a lot. the storms were so bad, we had so much snow that when the snow started to melt, the land and rivers couldn't handle the water and thus was the famous flood of '97. it really is famous, there are even wikipedia articles about it.

what i remember most about the flood was that we would go to school in early april of that year and everyone was divided into groups. i think i was in the blue group. at the beginning of the day, during morning announcements, they would say "blue group will be leaving at 9. red group will be leaving at 1. etc." then when our time came, we would board a bus to head to a warehouse full of sand. we then made sandbags until everyone stopped dreaming of vacations on sandy beaches. there were these machines in which sand would enter from the top. at the bottom, we would put a sack and fill it with sand about 3/4 of the way full. then we would close the bags and load them on to trucks which would take them to the river (which is 4 blocks from my house - opposite direction from the hospital) to build dikes. at night, my parents would wake up at 1 and 2 in the morning to go monitor the dikes. they would walk back and forth all night to make sure there were no leaks - the water on the other side was higher than many of the houses the dikes were built to protect.

at the time, i don't think i really realized what was going on - how a community could come together to help each other. i didn't realize how special that was; how quickly our city mobilized. i definitely did not realize how much our hard work affected the city. fargo was saved, but on the night of prom that year, we got word that our friend's in nearby grand forks (70 miles north of fargo) were all evacuated. their dikes weren't high enough to stop the water and the whole city was flooded. on the news, you couldn't even see the tops of 2 and 3 story houses. my friend's homes were gone - no more pictures, clothes, memories. some of my friend's went to live with relatives in fargo or minneapolis. they didn't finish school that year.

it was a very memorable time in my life - a time i didn't fully appreciate until much more recently. for now, though, no flood. my bedroom windows have 3 inches of snow inside them. and yet, i have yet to complain that it's "too cold" outside. i love the cold. ahhh. thus is the life of a north dakotan.