Obama is on record as saying that DC Public Schools need to toughen up. That they didn't need to close for this recent snow (and Chicago would not have).

Chicago's Mayor Daley is on record as saying that Chicago schools never close. I will have to ask my friends who still live there if that is true. The neighborhoods are more dense, there are acres and acres of three-story brownstones with no side yards to speak of. Many of these brownstones are three apartments, one per story. Kids walk to school, and it doesn't even take that long.

Chicago is colder. Most of the snow that falls stays snow for a while. You can plow it out of your way (onto the sidewalks where the children are supposed to be walking so they have to walk in the streets).

Now, there are a few neighborhoods in DC that are that dense. U street has the buildings for it. But there are huge swathes of federal buildings, parks, museums and other things that don't have people living in them (like the Loop, maybe).

DC is in the ice zone. When you plow, some will melt and turn to ice. Where ever someone walks, you'll get a little footprint of ice. On the warmer days, your snow will melt (but the sewer which is lower and darker will be full of ice so nothing can drain) and you'll get ice.

From the land of CA, my former roommate in college, an astrophysicist and SCA person, da-da, S. (I don't think she has a LiveJournal ID).

She was here for a thing at Goddard Space Flight Center and it ended early. So I gave her the directions to Emily's preschool and she got to experience the pick-up line and the playground socialization. Then we took her to that bastion of fine dining, McDonald's. (She mentioned that she was in a big hurry AFTER the playground, opps).

She will be visiting her family in KS the week AFTER starstraf's partner graduates. So we will miss her there. We are hoping to go to CA sometime, either when T has to travel for work, or on our own. She has a special pass of some sort for Disneyland and would love to join us there.

We were in Chicago for jfc013 's Memorial.

At the Memorial, we meet up with wendyzski, agladstone , x3non , post_toastie , ashtalet , jmcadams , mfloyd3 , reedrelay , and starstraf . I am sure that many of the other people that I talked to had LiveJournal accounts, I just didn't know their usernames.

I meet and talked to for the first time raven_ap_morgan .

Now, we're back at home and trying to improve our environment (read: clean up one of the many trashed rooms). Just before we left, we had the ducts cleaned and moved things about to allow access for the man cleaning.