It gets worse.

After wading to my car, flopping down onto the seat totally soaked while the windows started fogging up, my car would not start! No turning over. Nothing.

I called M. I sat and sulked. I tried starting it again and again. Finally, it started. Whatever. I just wanted to get home and out of my disgusting soaking wet shoes.

Then, just a few blocks down the street from my office, I got stuck in dead-stopped traffic. Everyone was trying to get on the Bay Bridge and, apparently, the Bay Bridge wasn't having any of it. The whole scenario was backing traffic up into "The Maze" (maze-like Oakland city streets). I was in The Maze.

I went one block in 30 minutes. I had never seen traffic like this. I figured there was a horrendous accident that was requiring all lanes to be closed except for one.

I called M, who was still at his office, and asked him to look up road conditions on the internet. He did and simply said it was reporting crawling traffic on the Bay Bridge. No accident, surprisingly enough. I told him that I was going to have to bypass the Bay Bridge because, at the rate I was going, it was going to take me 3 hours to get home.

I only live 15 miles from work, for crying out loud! On a good, traffic-free day, I can get home from work in as little as 30 minutes. On a normal traffic day, it takes me about one hour.

From Oakland, the only other way to get to San Francisco if you don't take the Bay Bridge is to go either south across the San Mateo Bridge or north across the Richmond Bridge. The San Mateo Bridge was the route I was considering (it's the shorter route) until M told me that the freeway leading to the San Mateo Bridge had reported a pretty nasty accident.

That left me with only one route home, which would require me to cross two bridges, the Richmond Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. But I had no choice.

I turned out of the snarled traffic and headed north. The rain was torrential and visibility was very low. I said silent prayers and imagined myself being enveloped in protective white light. Parts of the freeway were underwater, which caused additional panic.

Two hours and $7.00 in bridge tolls later, I made it home in one piece (barely). M had beaten me home.

I had been looking forward all day to dining at Villa Romana that night. However, after battling the roads for 2+ hours and being cold, wet, and grouchy, we decided to stay in and call it a night. We had food delivered and watched television.

Today, we were without power for 7 hours. After last night's low visibility treat, you'd better believe I Rain-X'ed my car windows today.

Tomorrow is spa day with Zaugi and, dammit, I deserve the relaxation!

M and I bought our xmas gifts to each other today. We went to our favorite jewelry store and picked out my diamond earrings while sipping champagne and then went to the camera store so that M could check out the camera I had researched. Turns out it was a gem! He's pretty excited about it.

I have to figure out when I'll be able to finish my xmas shopping. I guess it will have to be next weekend, as next weekend is the last weekend. Humph!

Then we bought some personalized xmas cards over the internet (yeah, I realize we will be sending them out super late. People will just have to deal) and I bought some new clear address labels.

M has been using Adobe Premiere to edit our wedding video. It's really exciting to see it shaping up! We're including some still photos, the Today show segment, credits, and titles. It's probably going to be excessively long, but we can't help it. We want to keep the good stuff! (And there's a lot of good stuff.)

I'm tired. I'm fantasizing about taking a hot bath and hitting the hay. I think I'll do it.

G'nite!