Yesterday was a snow day.

Based on the blizzard that was on the docket for Chicago, my ever-so-kind boss told us to simply not to come in. So when I left work Tuesday evening, I forwarded the office phones to my handy ole Blackberry, and I prepared my soul for a delicious day full of blankets, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks.

That night, the wind blew fiercely, the snow came down, and we cuddled in our bed to the tune of some rumblingly loud thunder. We woke up to shuddering winds, a cold apartment, and this view from our paper-thin windows:

Our windows have such thin glass and rattle so loudly in the wind that we have stuffed wads of paper between the glass and frame to reduce the noise.

All I had to do Wednesday for my job was answer the phone and keep an eye on my email.

These two mild activities were perfectly compatible with other endeavors.

Endeavors such as this cup of coffee, laced with my old friend Mr. Bailey.

Endeavors such as reading a cozy murder mystery on the couch. Please don’t hold me in contempt if I tell you that it’s called “Blueberry Muffin Murder.” It was the right thing to read curled up under an afghan with a cup of Hot Honey ‘n’ Lemon.

My husband responsibly did his school work in our second bedroom/office, and we both watched the storm progress.

I coined a new nickname for my husband–‘sweetie-bar-pie.’

Driven to the kitchen by sheer coldness, I made a hot pot of soup with some leftover turkey and generous amounts of wine and cream and Parmesan, based on the mushroom soup recipe I’ll be sharing with all y’all shortly.

It did not disappoint. I ate the soup while I talked to my Mom and caught up on her life and doings.

I love catching up with my Mom.

Then I read some of Yancey’s “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and meditated . . . with another cup of coffee in hand, of course.

I finished off the fantastic biography ‘The Last American Man’ (review coming soon!).

To preemptively avoid house-craziness, I did a little yoga/Pilates session on the rug, while watching The Biggest Loser. You can see my tried-and-true method on the computer screen: a minimized window playing my exercise DVD (with the sound muted) next to a show that I could hardly watch from a seat on the couch–it would just feel wrong.

They do crunches, I do crunches, and I can pretend that the trainers are yelling “one more time!” at me instead of the contestants. It’s quite motivational.

The snow stopped around noon, and over the next few hours the wind went from a howling force bent on destruction to a mild breeze.

So around 4pm, we donned hats and coats and boots and met our friends Julie and Zane at a nearby coffee shop, Zanzibar. I posed on a drift of snow in our apartment courtyard.

The piles of snow on the street made it an adventursome walk. Here’s my sweetie-bar-pie climbing over a mountain:

You can see a car in the bottom right of that first picture–it was simply abandoned in the middle of the street due to the impassable amounts of white stuff.

Julie and Zane had been out hiking around for 4 hours already. These people are hard core adventurers. In fact, Julie knows how to dehydrate food and thus fed the two of them for a week during an epic hike in the wilderness. I love having cool friends. Their coolness is bound to rub off on me, somehow, some time.

Zane is a photographer and has a scary face mask.

But on the way back home, when my entire nasal structure was starting to congeal and my earlobes were in a fiery agony, I started to deeply desire a scary face mask for myself. So what if I frightened small children? When you’re cold, nothing else seems to matter except getting warm again.

We walked down Lake Shore Drive, which was empty of traffic and instead peppered with people taking a walk, or skiing. There was a cute family who was progressing in snow shoes, all in a row, along the snow-covered beach. Zane and I snapped away at the eery landscape in front of us. I have so many pictures to share with you guys–but I’ve also had my fill of Photoshop for today. So maybe next week I’ll bring them out. The patterns of ice and snow were simply beautiful, the carefully placed strokes of an ingenuous Creator.

At home again, it was time for a dinner of hot, buttery noodles with a sprinkle of Pecorino Romano (a la Cacio e Pepe).

Later on in the evening the sweetie-bar-pie and I snuggled down on the couch and fired up our Netflix Instant Play. A bowl brimming with popcorn, freshly stove-popped and salted, also played a significant role.

All I can say is, when can I have another snow day? I’m all for it.