The Calm After The Storm

My commute to school yesterday was of an exciting nature and not one I'd like to repeat any time soon.  In fact, for the first time in I-dunno-how-long, I took the first opportunity to switch over to four-wheel drive somewhere around the three-quarter mark of the journey.  With this winter's repeated snow/ice events, most communities are down to about a cup a piece of salt and sand.  They are using the stuff judiciously.  To top things off, the whole thing was rather oddly timed and for much of the commute I was driving on roads that hadn't been even kissed by a plow at that early hour.

I arrived at school ever so grateful to our crack custodial staff for their efforts since my kissing the floor of the cafeteria would have been an unsanitary undertaking if not for them.  Even my principal, who is generally unfazed by anything that comes his way was sort of horrified by his journey to work.  

I entered the office to find the secretary disgustedly hanging up the phone after having spoken to her counterpart at the superintendent's office.  She reported that the big guy's round of phone calls to his various gurus and soothsayers had resulted in the belief that the whole thing would be over by noon.  By that time, the phones were ringing off the hook because one of the buses had gone off the road and the resulting extraction from the ditch was blocking commuter traffic.  

All in all, the mood was sort of foul around the place.  To be fair, this was a tough call.  The forecasts varied wildly from region to region and the path of the storm seemed to change every ten minutes.  I suppose that, if you have to give up a snow day, you might as well do it on a day when only one of your sixth graders shows up.  Since my fifth graders are all in regular classes for much of the time it was a pretty quiet day for my Cheerful (but rather sickly these days) Teaching Assistant and me.  

I'm assuming that we will be having some flooding issues later on so it's probably just as well that we have saved the snow day for ark building and whatnot.  

Friday is also the day I get to leave a little bit earlier as I put in more of the teaching hours than the rest of my kind during the other four days of the week.  I took advantage of the extra 45 minutes to do the marketing.  I had a feeling that I'd be more inclined to stay in today in spite of a more happy sort of weather report.  And, not surprisingly, this turned out to be true.  I have spent the day lazily knitting away on the Invisibility Shawl (which is going much better this time around, thank you very much) baking a little cornbread for no real reason and trying to find the carpet underneath that layer of wool 'n cat hair.  All in all, a much nicer way to wile away the hours than watching snow fall and wondering if the ride home will be as harrowing as the one what got you there.

I also got out the old polishing cloth.  The new boots, while still pretty darned shiny, inspired me to give a little of the love to the leather.  I remain hopelessly and embarrassingly smug about this purchase.  I've long sought a pair of brown ankle boots with enough of a heel to be cool but not so much as to make me teeter and fall down the stairs.  There is no boot cool enough to compensate for the geek factor which results from lying in a crumpled pile, arms and legs akimbo, in the stairwell.  I know these things.  I have done the research.

These should do the trick.  Not bad for twelve bucks!

And, as if the boot polishing and successful shawl knitting were not enough, the Sci Fi Channel has seen fit to grace me with a viewing of Resident Evil this afternoon.  Good stuff.  Very, very good stuff.  Corporate zombies are pretty scary.  However, I like to keep current on my research and shall resist all urges to cast mine eyes away.  

But, since this is my umpteeth viewing of this training film, I'm still not finding it as disturbing as yesterday's commute...

SA