If you were on the Internet at all in the first part of this week, you probably heard of a little something called winter storm Juno. AKA my worst nightmare, or so I thought.

When news broke on Sunday that we in NYC would be hit with our first blizzard of the season, people were anxious. The words historic and biggest ever and three feet of snow were being tossed around, and not just by 20-somethings at my church – by meteorologists and newscasters and the mayor. Everyone headed to the grocery stores, which had become war zones. Or so I heard. My friends and I went out for ice cream.

By the time I got to work Monday morning, the snow was already coming down, despite the fact that the blizzard wasn’t supposed to hit until that night. Oh, boy. I made arrangements with my boss so I could leave in time to get back to Brooklyn before sunset, and take my laptop with me to work from home – at that point I expected to be housebound for days. By lunchtime, my roommate was texting me from Arizona – her return flight, originally scheduled to get in late Tuesday, had already been cancelled and she was rebooked for Wednesday, hopefully. So I’d be riding out the storm of the century on my own.

By mid-afternoon, the wind had picked up and the snow was sticking.

So we were right on schedule for three feet of snow. I left the office, hit up the bank for cash (it had closed early, along with basically every other business, but the ATMs were still open), schlepped home and settled in for what I expected would be the long haul. News broke that the trains were shutting down – the first time in over 100 years such an act had been prompted by snow alone. I cooked basically all of my food, dug out the super strong flashlight, fielded a phone call from my nervous father, and went to bed with my alarm set for 7:30, a solid 90 minutes later than I normally sleep. When the alarm blared, I rolled over and opened my curtain, expecting to be buried.

Instead, I saw… not much more than had been there the day before. I grabbed my phone and opened Twitter (thank goodness my cleanse was over, right?!) to a stream of articles with titles like “NYC completely overreacts” and “How the city’s unnecessary shutdown will negatively impact the economy.” Fun stuff. Lucky for me (and basically everyone else), the trains were still down and so I got to stay in my pajamas all day and work from my couch. My roommate returned the next day and life has returned to normal, although the grocery stores remain unstocked.

Although, it’s snowing today. Here we go again..

Were you impacted by Juno?

As thrilled as I am to have settled into a life and a routine here in New York City, sometimes I get an itch for an adventure. It’s the sort of craving that, when I lived in Phoenix, required packing up the car and heading into the mountains for the day, or to the beach if I had more than a day to work with. Now, though, I can grab my purse, hop on the train, and be in a completely different world within an hour – and without leaving the city! So when I realized a couple weeks ago that life was feeling a little stale, that’s exactly what I did: Took the C train from my central Brooklyn apartment to a Manhattan neighborhood I’d barely touched on yet – the Upper West Side.

It was a bit of a drab day involving quite a bit of snow (slushy snow, not pretty snow), and it ended with some pretty serious retail therapy at Columbus Circle, but I still had a chance to explore the stunning Riverside Park, and can’t wait to go back in a different season!