My next-door neighbors hire a plow service, but I don’t have the money to spare. We don’t get enough snow to bother here in Albany, in my opinion.

Yesterday was our first snowfall since the storm that led to Isis’s accident. I remember hearing a big “CRUNCH” that night but assumed it was the plow service next door, so I didn’t think anything of it. Last night, I heard the plow and ran to the window, assuming someone’s car had been destroyed. No. Just the plow.

It’s going to take me longer than I had thought to get over this.

Things flood a lot in Albany, or at least in my neighborhood. Normally, not the kind of catastrophic floods that do serious property damage and carry away cars. We see more minor floods, that create ankle-deep lakes at the end of your driveway, or turn the space on the street where you’ve parked your car into a tiny skating rink from which your car cannot be extracted and you have to call in to work and feel like a helpless moron. (I’m not bitter.)

Last Tuesday, Dad drove out from Syracuse in my new (to me) car. We bought it from a neighbor of his, and it’s lovely, low mileage, and well maintained. I had to return my rental before he arrived and no one was available to drive me back. The rental place was only a mile or so away and the weather was decent, so I decided to just walk home.

I encountered this frozen puddle on the sidewalk along Washington Avenue. You can tell from the picture that it wasn’t very frozen by then. It had thawed enough by Tuesday that the surface ice cracked when I walked across it, but I’m glad I didn’t walk down that sidewalk the day before.