Columnist Susan Snyder: Feeling quite cozy in Vegas

Friday, Dec. 6, 2002 | 9:16 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

December is the time of year when we get to feel a little smug.

Smug, because our friends and relations in the Midwest and back East are buried under layers of icy snow, and we have to wear only a sweater to walk the dog in the morning.

Tree branches were snapped under the weight of the heavy slush that passes for eastern snow in North Carolina. Schools closed in Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Maryland, West Virginia and New Jersey, as Northeasterners braced for up to a foot of snow.

A Las Vegas friend said his son was stranded in North Carolina on Wednesday night because they couldn't de-ice the plane. The son has a job interview in California this weekend and needs to be home today.

I'm thinking the California gig was looking pretty good Thursday, no matter what the duties or pay.

Heading the other direction turned out to be just as bad. State Sen. Mike Schneider, a Las Vegas Democrat, left Wednesday for an annual meeting of state government officials in Richmond, Va.

I reached him on his cell phone Thursday as he was having lunch in a downtown Richmond coffee shop with Nevada Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick, a Gardnerville Republican.

"Why they don't have these in Key West or something this time of year?" Schneider joked. "Even the snowplows are getting stuck out here."

He was supposed to arrive in Virginia on Wednesday, but the ice storm slammed St. Louis just before his connecting flight was to leave.

"We spent three hours sitting on the runway. I got in at 3:30 this morning," the senator said. "Everything at the airport was shut down. We hopped onto the airline's van with the crew to get downtown."

The conference, where politicians discuss such issues as strategies for dealing with whatever the federal government asks them to do, typically attracts five to 10 representatives from Nevada, Schneider said.

But the only other Nevadan Schneider had spotted was Hettrick.

"The workers at the (airport) transportation booth said there wasn't anybody coming in," Schneider said. "I think there are probably (Nevada) people stranded all over the Midwest. Everything here is deserted."

Schneider says one of the topics up for grabs is how states are going to deal with the homeland security requirements that federal officials are making but for which they are not providing any money. Nevada isn't the only state strapped for cash these days, he said.

Such challenges loomed large, but Schneider's immediate problem was footwear. All he had with him was a pair of expensive leather loafers to wear with suits and a pair of low-riding Sperry Topsiders. He opted for the latter to spare the loafers the perils of salt-laden slush and snow.

Ick. Remember those days? Cloth car seats that crackle when you sit down because they're so stiff from the cold. Breaking the inch-thick layer of ice from the windshield with a single, sharp whack of the ice-scraper.

Standing at the living room window in your jammies, sipping the morning's first cup of coffee and watching the snowplow rumble past and block the end of the driveway you'll have to shovel. Again.

Homesick?

Me neither.