Friends and funny weather

We hosted Community Meal at our place yesterday and enjoyed some delicious spaghetti, salad and bread with amazing ice cream for dessert. Here are Mark, Megan, Goose, Greg and Lora:


It was the first time we had hosted in a while and always enjoy the excuse for cleaning up and--of course--the great company!

The weather lately has been so shifty, though I'm not sure why I am still surprised when things change. A week ago, the temperatures were below zero, the wind chill was even lower, and the snow fell and fell. In the past few days, we've had temperatures in the 40s (up to 49 today!), and nearly all the snow has melted, save for a few dirty went lumps here and there. Then today it began to rain. Eric said that the northern suburbs had a thunderstorm this afternoon.

Here's a shot of the rainy weather in our "yard":

An alley I passed today on my walk back from the Y:

And now, in these past few hours, the temperature has dropped to 9 -- a change of 40 degrees!!!! The wind chill is -12 and the forecast is for a low of 2 degrees overnight!

Here's another shot out the same window that I took just a few moments ago:


What you can't see is the force of the wind. It looks like a blizzard out there! I think I'm going to go curl up in bed and read.