Well, Saturday 02/09/13 set quite a few records for sever winter Nor'easters. We got about 20 inches overall in the Dover area, but the view from out of the library window is 5 feet all around. We have snow drifts and plow piles almost bigger than the garage roofs. Amazing storm. The storm was so bad over the entire East Coast that MA, CT, and RI all basically shut down, even banning travel by car on the main roads and highways. That's how bad it was.
The storm started in the early morning hours Friday 02/08. By the time we got up, there was already several inches down. But the news and weather services said that things were going to get really bad as the day went on. As a precaution, most work places let everyone out around noon.
Sue left her car at work and I drove over and picked her up around 1:00pm. The storm was so beautiful and the roads hadn't degraded very much due to the high winds such that we decided to take a short drive. We just went down to Durham, NH, up north on Rt. 125 to Rt. 9 and back over to Dover. Just a wonderful drive, though toward the end it was definitely getting messy.
Before heading for home, we stopped off at the store and grabbed some sandwich stuff and other nonperishable items in case the power went out - which it never did; a wonderful thing. After getting home and putting the food away, we settled into playing backgammon for the afternoon and watching through the living room windows the snow pour down. The power stayed on despite the winds picking up quite a bit, so we cooked a pizza for dinner and then watched some of episodes of recorded shows before turning in.
When we woke up Saturday morning 02/09, things were a real mess. The storm had dumped so much snow that going out would have been totally impossible. The wind must have had 55mph to 60mph in gusts at times. This just blew snow all over the place into close to white-out conditions. We couldn't imagine what it must have been like out on the roads.
We spent a couple hours sipping coffee and just glued to the tv, watching the destructive power of the storm. Truly amazing.... We spent the latter part of the morning working on projects until we couldn't take it anymore. We just wanted to get out into it all!
By about 2:30pm we knew that the storm had just about blown itself out, though it was still coming down and the wind still howled through the trees. The maintenance crew had managed to clear almost 2 feet of snow from the condo roads and parking areas, so we thought we'd better retrieve Sue's car from work.
When we got there, her car was pretty much buried, snow piled three-fourths of the way up on the windward side. It took us almost an hour to shovel her out, and into the open where we could clear the snow off the top of her car. And then I got stuck trying to back around a snow drift and had to shovel myself out.
We came home and spent about 40 minutes shoveling 3 feet of snow off of the deck; not good for the deck and does create a safety issue if exit is blocked. I was totally done in at that point. So, we had a glass of wine and played a couple of sets of backgammon to unwind.
Sue had a coupon for The Farm restaurant here in Dover, and so we jumped in the car and headed over. We had wanted to give them a try as the business had changed hands and we had heard some good comments. We both felt that though the food was okay, it was overpriced for the quality we got. For example, for an appetizer we got seared scallops on a bed of greens and spiced cranberries, I think it was. Even the waitress mentioned that they would be "... a bit on the spicy side." Wrong. The heat made our lips numb and totally obscured the taste of the scallops. The dish was ruined because the chef is an idiot. Can we spell hot-rubbed-wings bar food? Nope. And for dinner, I had their pot pie. Okay, so it was fine. But it was totally bland. I mean as in no flavor. For this I paid $15? I don't think so, no matter how 'quaint' the atmosphere. We will pass on any future visits to The Farm.... The saving grace for the evening was the compelling 2012 Denzel Washington movie, Flight.
After eggs and a muffin for breakfast on Sunday morning, we headed out for a long drive to see the effects from the storm and to run some errands. When we left about 11:30am, the roads were clear, the sun was out, and it was even fairly balmy out at 40 degrees or so. After riding around some of the areas of Dover, we headed out over Rt. 4 to the traffic circle at Rt. 125 to grab some coffee at McDonalds.
We took Rt. 125 south to Rt. 107 and stopped off at Ridabock Glass in East Kingston, NH to grab the artifacts that we had created during our class the week before. And then Sue navigated us through some of the most beautiful local back roads all the way back up through Exeter, Newmarket, and then Durham where we got back onto Rt. 108.
After stopping at the Hannaford supermarket on Rt. 108 to shop for dinner and the week, I opened a bottle of merlot and we played backgammon for awhile before I started cooking. At Sue's request, I attempted the Beef Tenderloin in a Port Shiitake Reduction meal that she had done for us last Valentine's Day. I also did a side of thyme, garlic, and shallot mushrooms in a Worcestershire and sherry reduction that came out pretty good. Unfortunately, I just didn't feel that my beef came out as good as what Sue had done. But we had a wonderfully relaxing meal listening to a Steve Tyrell CD with a crackling fire going in the fireplace. We topped the night off with the really enjoyable 2009 Hachi: A Dog's Tale.
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