Fire!

Interesting end of the week.
There was a fire at the theatre, during a show! First time such a thing has happened. I wasn't there.
Everyone was evacuated, no one injured.
Red curtains only thing that was burned, audio equipment was ruined from the sprinklers.

Fire empties Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville - WGN
 



When I went to work Thursday morning, I hardly noticed any smoke smell! Then I got up to my floor and could really smell it. There was even smoky smell in my office. Surprising, when you went to exec offices, which is above/behind the stage you couldn't smell anything in there!
Then we had a big weekend of shows - Friday, Sat and Sunday! The stage had water damage and soot all over it, curtain needed to be changed and some seats had some white markings from the fire extinguishers. AmeriClean came in and spent all of Thursday and Friday cleaning the whole theatre. ON Friday I noticed that the smell was gone and just smelled like cleaner. The theatre looks so clean now! The stage was sparkling.




Honestly, the fire wasn't that big of a story to make in on Chicago news, but it did. The sprinklers did their job, our security and staff did their job and responded quickly.

Superbowl

Since my sister’s family are big Packers fans we went to their house to watch the game. I can’t believe they won, too!

   E wore a his green hoodie and my sister had green and yellow beads for everyone!

I brought little hotdog croissants and taco dip

I made meatballs – the chili sauce & grape jelly ones – yummy!   

the kids just played – mostly wii Just Dance 1 & 2! Love it! I danced some and even my mom did 1 song!  

We also finally celebrated my sister’s 40th birthday!

We went to The Lighthouse then on Wed. for dinner. We had superb steaks there. Since T couldn’t make it I took home half of my dinner to him.

Ethan said couple of funny things there.

“They gave me 2 forks! They are crazy!” I guess we don’t eat out at nicer places with him.

And then he was fascinated by the hose that was pouring drinks into the glasses!

     We had a table reserved that was right next to the bar area, so he saw the waitress refilling the drinks. I never realized he had never seen that drink hose thing! I had to explain there were different buttons on it for the different types of pop.

Blizzard 2011

Weathermen have been telling us that we would be getting a potential of 24 inches of snow! The models kept changing so I was thinking probably 16”.

I live in the yellow part…fun!

We got a new snowblower on Monday – for this big storm! Our 10yr old one bit the dust and T just couldn’t get it to work. We got one of the last ones at HD. I met the boys there at 12:15, so I could put it on my cc. Ethan was home sick! He was running a fever on Sunday night, 101.8! He took his own temp when he woke up and he said it was 101.1. Can’t believe he did that on his own. Took it again at 7:45am and it was 100.7, still not good enough for school. He was acting normal just coughing a little. Trent said that 4 ppl came in to buy snowblowers while they were waiting like 5-10 min for me to get there! He had the one he wanted on a cart already. He ended up getting the Briggs & Stratton one, instead of the Toro.

The winter blizzard was set to start at 3pm Tues. thru 3pm Wed. I went to work yesterday but was wanting to leave early around 4pm to get Ethan. Well, school closed an hour early, so E was let out at 2:30. He knew just to go to afterschool care as usual. T had to go in for practices at 1:30 til 3pm, so he said he would pick him up.

It started snowing around 1:30, but wasn’t anything major. I remember telling Sally that it isn’t that bad, I can still see cars on 30. At 2:45 M B closed the offices and M2 called me to tell us to wrap up what we were doing and get going home. I glanced out my window and was so surprised how much was falling and how windy it was! And I couldn’t see the cars on 30!! I ended up leaving at 3:15, the drive wasn’t scary. It took me twice as long to get home due to inching along and because alot of people left early so it was an extra mass of cars, I think.

taken on my way home at US30 & Broadway..not too bad but lower visibility.Tues I got a new desk at work so we were shuffling furniture around. It is still not totally organized. It is really awesome though. Just nice to have something a little newer! I was most concerned about how my cords would reach to everything with this new setup. It is a u-shaped desk and I love the hutch.

T did the driveway around 4pm, and then a 2nd time at 8:30pm

Ethan’s school was cancelled on Tuesday night at 6pm. At work yesterday we were talking that we wouldn’t be coming in on Wed. I thought maybe I would wait to see what it was like by 3pm and go in, but really what would be the point. I am so very thankful I didn’t have any ads or on deadline with anything today. So thankful.  M2 texted me to stay home.

We woke up to all of this…and it wasn’t quite done yet! T’s 3rd time shoveling everything at 10am Wed

making an area on our back deck for Ashton to do his business… at this point looks like around 15” of snow!

plowing the sidewalk back to the circle to plow out a neighbor lady’s driveway. He thought she was shoveling it, but it was another neighbor lady so T sent her home!

T had little icicles on his beard, what a trooper

 

made him some hot choc. then made some French Toast. 

But it kept on snowing….

we were hit with a lot of ‘lake effect’ this was at 10:50am

Then major white-out conditions around noon that lasted for an hour or two…amazing how we couldn’t see down our street. It was major snowfall and wind – they said about 2” an hour.

taken at 11:55am from the front door and I opened the door it wasn’t taken behind a screen or dirty window.

  

more pics from around 1:45pm Wed…  

then it finally stopped snowing by 3:30pm Wed. so we got out to play in it

I shoveled the back patio again for Ashton, which was really necessary by this point!

 

T blowing the driveway for a 4th and final time…

Ethan and I were searching for his green saucer sled in the garage, but we couldn’t find it. T was busy snowblowing so I didn’t want to stop him to ask. So I let E use the lid to a plastic bin for a sled. He went down this big hill a few times, but with my guidance.

T went over to another neighbors house to help them plow out. The big plows had not been back down our street. I saw them at 1:30am, but then saw them again at 5:30pm

look at all that snow! love these shots of all the snow piled up!

School was cancelled for Thursday, we got the call at 3pm Wed.!  It should be like –4 tomorrow morning, too. I will attempt going in tomorrow, but after noon.

Trent thinks the snow total was at least 24”, some of the drifts were 3-4, 5 ft!

We ended the night by watching Groundhog Day on netflix. The boys fell asleep and then I got bored with it. Maybe we’ll finish it up tomorrow! At what point does that day finally advance?