ran in the sleet this morning, and being pelted by ice is not all it's cracked up to be.

no school! no school!

back in the day, when it would snow and they'd close schools, the snowbird report would come on. i could sing you the music - they still use the same theme music - and the snowbird would call out "no school! no school!" and then the weatherman would read an interminable list of counties in this and the neighboring state - counties which had chosen to close schools on account of the snow. a spectacular bonus of snow days was that there was no homework. like say it was tuesday so you had homework for wednesday, but it snowed, and you returned to school on thursday, all that tuesday homework that was due wednesday would now be due friday. yeah, it's wack, but cool if you're a kid. one year, i swear it snowed every wednesday and every sunday all thru janvier and we were out of school the entire month. i went with the shaman and the little boys to the shaman's montessori-before-montessori-was-cool preschool academy where in matching denim pinafores, the shaman and i would lead the children in singing and enable them to explore science and art. i am not shitting you. that is how it went down, complete with matching denim pinafores.

at any rate, that year it snowed continually and we used up all our snow days so that school was scheduled into the summer. when it came time for brigadoon and school was still in session, i left school and went to brigadoon which demonstrates the priorities with which i was raised. that, and i am a genius, so i didn't really knead skool in teh frist place.

where was i? snow days. right.

today was a snow day. every city and county school system within a 200 mi radius of the snowbird is closed. my workplace opened 1 hour late but carpool buddy and i decided to hit the commute at our normal time, and we both got in a good workout before work. then, starting at 9:12AM the weather promptly deteriorated and the streets became a mess. here's the thing - we don't get enough of this weather to make it worth investing in equipment to clear the streets. they become a mess, and in a couple days it's back to 50º and it all melts off, so it's just not worth the govt's money to purchase the plows and so when the snows come it's a mess. any fool can drive on a plowed street. it's this slushy mess that's a challenge.

work finally closed at 1PM so we headed home around 1:30. took us just over an hour to get home, which isn't really bad considering it's normally a 20 minute commute. the street conditions varied wildly - from dry to wet to slushy to packed slush to frozen packed slush covered with a layer of snow. the traffic was light, though, and people were pleasingly patient, leaving plenty of room between cars. we made it down the interstate about halfway home - until we got to where someone's carelessness had turned the interstate into a parking lot and there we exited & took to the surface streets. a long but uneventful commute. the most interesting thing was the differing street conditions. was it due to traffic patterns? weather patterns? both?

and, so here i am at home before i'd normally have left work, sitting at the kitchen table with a cuppa joe and the new computer, in the blue light of the snow-deflected weary sunshine, watching the bright-red cardinals have a snack at the snow-covered birdfeeder, getting an unexpected long weekend off to a solid start.