Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

17:15 -- ZhiiizshBANG! Unmistakable sound of a car crash in the intersection outside my window. Watch to see whether it seems like anybody's injured.

17:18 -- BLAMthump!! Even louder (due to proximity) sound of another chunk o' plaster falling off the ceiling in the nedt room. Go to investigate, discover chunk is much smaller than it sounded. Must've hit a nearly empty bucket at a particularly noisy angle. Also hear sirens.

17:20 -- Look out window, see police car arrive and notice that a fire/rescue vehicle is present (looks like a paramedics' truck but I don't have a good angle). I guess somebody was hurt after all, even though each driver was able to move his or her car (under power) out of the main travel lanes. (The most bent-up car I saw took a little while to do so. It looks as though one other was bumped clear of the intersection by the crash itself.)

17:30 -- Attention span? Not right now. Kind of a distracting, make-me-jumpy evening so far, after only getting an hour and a half of sleep late this morning when the rain finally started to ease off and I could go more than 35 minutes without emptying one of the big buckets.

Any of you about to get on the roads in the the Balto-Wash region (and based on what I saw on RADAR, a bunch of other places too), be extra careful. From the sound, that impact was at a pretty good speed, probably more than the 30MPH limit here. From the duration of the non-rotating-tires-zipping-over-wet-pavement sound, that must've been quite a distance one car slid. The rain did eventually clear the sheet-ice from my front steps (well, I think it would have done so even without the salt I threw out there earlier to try make the sidewalk a little less dangerous for schoolkids this morning (which, at the time, just cracked and clouded the ice to make it visible -- probably better than the "just looks damp" sheet it had been, but still not much good for traction)) but it sounds like the streets are still ooky-slick.

(Oh, and I got a phone call this morning from one of the roofers who was supposed to come out today, wanting to reschedule, and sounding rather unhappy about the weather's effect on his work schedule. The other one just didn't show up, probably figuring that I could guess on my own that today wouldn't be good for climbing up on roofs.)

Neeed mooore sleeep.