I’ve been out-and-about singing holiday concerts with the community choir quite a bit lately, and we’ve still got another week left.

Today was really one of my only “free” days to put up the Christmas tree.

After running a 15K (9.3 miles) race this morning, taking a two-hour nap, finalizing my “performance” for tomorrow’s Blogger Christmahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert and making chili, I was ready to begin the task.

I’m going to buy a new tree after they go on sale. This is why:

Aside from the annoyance of having to insert and reform each branch to make it look like it hasn’t been shoved back in the box all year, it’s not a terrible tree. I just want one that’s more user-friendly.

I assume those brown things are supposed to be pine cones, and not dead branches.

After wrestling with five strands of lights (you need a lot of lights to make a fake tree look decent!), I had enough for the night. Ornaments to come later!

It snowed a few days ago, and the leaves are still falling. This happens every year.

Actually, I didn’t finish bagging leaves until July this past year. I blame that on my busy spring, I had a lot of out-of-town weekends!

Not really. People just tend to overreact here. I’m sure it’ll be the top story on the news tonight.

This is what it looked like when I got to work this morning:

In my 20-mile commute (which usually takes 25 minutes but today took about 45 — thankfully I carpool with my husband and could use the HOV lane or it would have been much worse!), I passed almost a half-dozen multi-car accidents. The first one involved six cars. Most of them had more than one car facing the wrong way. None of them were simple fender-benders, there were a lot of very smashed cars.

Meanwhile, there’s barely a dusting of snow. Sure, the roads are slick, but as long as you don’t drive too fast and don’t slam on the breaks it’s fine.

We don’t live so far south that snow is a rarity. It snows every year, multiple times a year. Not always substantial, but it’s there.

But they don’t know how to handle it. People can’t drive. Snow-removal/street treatment sometimes starts well before the snow begins (all the salt blows away) or doesn’t arrive until roads are already a mess. Though, if there is a big storm predicted, they will line up along the highway and wait for it.

Schools often cancel the night before when there is snow in the forecast, and then it doesn’t snow at all. Today they were open, but if it keeps snowing (snow advisory is on until 8 p.m.), they will close early.

I went to college in western New York, where it wouldn’t be uncommon to get two feet of snow in a few hours. My sophomore year, my Geo Prizm got stuck in a few snowdrifts, yet I still managed to dig out and go along my way.

The last time we got two feet in Maryland, I didn’t leave the house for two days. Our cul-de-sac is not high on the priority list for snow removal!

We’re only supposed to get up to two inches today. I’m hoping I won’t have a horrible commute tonight!