Weekend Plans: The Snowstorm That Wasn’t
When I was a little kid, sufficient amounts of snow were reason for a day off from responsibilities. Now, Michigan’s snow days had requirements a hair steeper than other places I lived… lake effects meant that sometimes we’d get a yard of snow overnight and that happened often enough that the occasional little foot of snow meant that, yeah, we still had to go to school.
But on the morning where we overheard our parents talk about the coming snowstorm or paid attention to the weather part of the evening news and watched the weather guy make large sweeping motions over the lake and push them into Detroit, man, that made going to bed fun and anxious. We’d wake up in the morning and run to the window and look out and see if it was still snowing (if it was still snowing, it was a good sign). Then we’d look down at the ground and see the blanket of snow on the ground. How deep was the snow? How can you tell from the bedroom window? Oooh! Look at the shed! Was it a couple of inches? A foot? How close is the top of the snow to the handle?
And then we’d dejectedly get dressed and go to school more often than not.
Well, I’m a grown up now. If there’s a “snow day”, that means that, sure, maybe I don’t have to go into work… but it also means that I have to use a sick/vacation day if I don’t go in. Even if we get a yard of snow and my boss tells me “Jaybird, the roads are awful! Stay home!”, it’s not a “snow day”. It comes at a cost (even if it’s one that I don’t mind paying).
As such, we heard that there was a snowstorm coming on Wednesday night. First it was just “snow”. Then it was 3 inches. Then 6. Then up to 9.
And I went to bed very excited… when I opened my eyes, the light from the dawn was different. The window was lit up more than it should have been at that time of day. Excitedly, I ran to the window and looked out. The tree in the back yard was COVERED. And the yard was covered! But I looked at the street behind the house and it was dry and clear and oh-so-drivable.
So today was not a snow day. But the moment where I opened my eyes and looked unlensed at the bedroom window and noticed that it was lit up like light was being reflected from off the ground? That was awesome. Even if I dejectedly got dressed.
But this weekend is a 3-day weekend for me. Not only is The Outer Worlds coming out on Friday for PS4 owners, it’s my 21st Anniversary on Saturday and we’re going to be doing some light and minor anniversary stuff. Lunch at a nice restaurant, game night with friends, and the usual litany of errands and chores. (And a new and improved plan to have a 20ish minute date every school night where we sit and watch one episode of Batman: The Animated Series together… starting Monday.)
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “‘I Snow, I Snow'” by Lihoman…. Used under a creative commons license.)
Friends who grew up in smaller towns than I did (that were less spread-out) talk about their memories of hearing the fire-station siren blowing at 6 am, which signalled a snow day. When I was a kid, more commonly, it was scrolled on the local morning tv news, or announced on the radio (every kid knew just which radio stations would reliably do that).
Snow days were rare for us in Ohio, though I do remember the big blizzard (a “bomb cyclone”) of 1978 that was so bad that we didn’t have electricity and they even asked people to ration natural gas (?) so my family wound up camping out around the fireplace we had.
Here, in Oklahoma, we don’t often get snow (I am not in the panhandle, where it is snowing now) but even an inch here is enough to shut everything down. And being a college professor? If the university is closed, I get a free day. One of the few perks of the job. (I also tell students – I have a lot of commuter students who live in rural areas – that if they can’t get in safely, not to come in. I am sure some people take too much advantage of that, but I’d rather that happen than someone kill themselves trying to come in)
I might take a quilt top in to a shop in my area that recently started offering longarm quilting services. Not sure what else but I need some time off. More and more, I find I CANNOT work weekends as well as all week. I’m sure this will hurt my future evaluations for productivity but I’ve stared into the void a lot this fall and concluded life is too short to work all the time…Report
Hah. I remember that was about the only time I ever did listen to the radio, when they were reading off the list and I was waiting for them to hit the four-hundreds because that’s where our number was. (It was nice, actually, because they went up into the eights and those kids were practically dressed and out the door before they learned; it was even worse for the kids in the ones and twos because they either had to get up super early to hear the start, or wait even longer for it to scroll around to the beginning again…)Report
I lived in Southern Indiana in ’78. I think that storm was the one when my sister was born.Report
My parents were teachers so it wasn’t so much listening to radio as waiting on the phone call.Report
As a kid, I spent two (horrible, terrible) or so years living in Texas. One winter it snowed a few inches of this thin, powdery snow that we kids up north would have kicked aside in disgust as it wasn’t worth anything. However, most of my neighbors had never seen that much snow, so I found myself outside with them trying to make snowballs and snowmen out of this uncooperative fluff. Later, my Mom and I drove to the grocery store and marveled at the astounding number of cars on the sides of the roads.
And 100% double thumbs up on life being too short to work all the time!Report
And I called the shop; the person who does the quilting is going to be in tomorrow and has place in her queue for me. So tonight I press off the top and seam up the backing. I’m excited about this.
been a while since I felt excited about very much.
(It will take a while for me to get it back, she warned me she was already into the “Christmas crunch” of things people wanted for gifts, and since this is just one of my own quilt tops for my own bed, I don’t mind waiting until January or even February.)Report
I dig the date night plan. BTAS is a classic–I haven’t watched it in a while, but I imagine it holds up well, and is probably better than a lot of current stuff. We tend to find at least a show or two to stream together. We just finished Amazon Prime’s Carnival Row, which was better than I expected.
And congratulations to both of you on the anniversary. Your marriage is old enough to drink.Report
As disappointing as it was for you, I got a two-hour delay out of it, and found that the roads were less than ideal until I got about three miles (and a few hundred feet of elevation) south of my house. Otherwise, yeah…kinda disappointing. And congratulations on 21 years!Report
The little California coastal town I grew up in was almost always 75*, year-round. Oh, you might get a couple of nights in winter where you could see your breath(!), but that was it. But, one day when I was about 19 we got around an inch of snow, maybe less. The whole town didn’t just shut down, it went into full panic mode. Car crashes, as no one knew how to drive, schools shut, business’ closed, the works. Contrast that with the town I was born in, a far eastern Washington college town. The year my parents moved there, a couple of bay-area kids with a baby and a convertible Mustang, it dropped down to -42, with 14 feet of snow apparently. None of the locals blinked.
Tonight would normally be date night, but I have to have a 45 minute long MRI, so maybe just quick burgers.
(Happy 21st! All the best to you two.)Report
You know, I love how the light is in the morning after it snows. I experienced this both in NW Washington and in Williamsburg, VA. Though a couple of inches of snow in VA had a lot more impact.
But yeah, that light when you wake up, everything looks different inside as well as out. Now that I live in CA, I don’t see that any more, and I miss it.Report
Oh, yeah. Especially when you were a kid. Especially on a Saturday or during Christmas break and waking up to that changed light meant there was SNOW to go out an play in.
While we have “seasons” where I live now, the changes are a lot more muted (no fall color, very rare snow in winter) and I miss seasons that changed OBVIOUSLY.Report
For me, the magical light is at night, when it’s snowing heavily, and you can’t see very far but the whole backdrop glows. Also enough wind that you can hear it whistling around the corners of the building. Don’t get that sound at our current house — the windows and insulation are good enough that the sound doesn’t make it in.
Even though the event was pretty much a nothingburger down here on the flat, it’s nice to see the white stuff starting to accumulate up on the high peaks.Report
No snow here in the Windy City just yet, which is peachy keen as far as this bicycle commuter is concerned.
Tonight is the last regular season game for one of my officiating crew. He’s hanging it up after 45 seasons, so we’re going to have a little do for him after the game.
After a week of bachelorhood, I’ve got to clean up the house because my wife is coming home tomorrow. Not a moment too soon!Report
And I wake up this morning to a snow day. Boss texted “work from home if you can, use a vacation day if you can’t, don’t get on those roads.”
This is so much better than a snow day on Thursday would have been, I can’t even believe it.Report
The timing could have been better for me. My side of the driveway is shoveled, and the sidewalk (required by law). Now for a shower and then off to give blood.Report