And Yet Another

Snow Day Number Two.

Surprisingly, it was called on Thursday afternoon (which allowed many of us to stay awake and watch the BCS championship game without worrying about how little sleep we'd get on a school night). Amazing how fast the emails and text messages flew among the faculty when the call came out about a second snow day. Although not much snow was predicted, the roads off the main drags were a mess.

The terrain here is hilly and curvy with lots of dips and turns in most of the roads, even many that are within the city limits. Mr. Bluebird and I went out and ran errands yesterday, and there were some roads that were just fine, but others were littered with abandoned (and in some cases, smashed up) vehicles. Unfortunately, when it's icy and cold (and it's a whopping 18 degrees right now), this can be treacherous.

The Guidance Goddess lives in a rural part of the county, at the foot of the hill. She spent most of the day watching people attempt to climb the hill, fail, and then slide backwards. By the end of the night she'd seen four wrecks, including a beautiful new truck that appeared to have been totaled, and was getting used to the blue and red flashing lights blinking on and off at the foot of her driveway.

It is also brutally cold for this part of the country. Most of our homes are heated with electric heat and heat pumps and trust me, when it gets to about 20 degrees outside, those heat pumps just can't cut it. I'm lucky to keep it around 63-64 degrees in the house right now, so I'm thankful that I am a knitter and have lots of warm woolly things to help keep us warm. We won't hit 32 degrees until maybe Monday.

And to make it worse...it was warmer this morning in Chicago - Chicago! - than it was here.

That's just plain wrong, folks.