I finally got a "good" snow day yesterday. It had been snowing pretty much since I woke up, and as the afternoon dragged on things really got a lot worse, to the point where we had a winter storm warning here in town. I kept checking MCCC‘s Website to see if they were going to cancel, but they kept saying that they were open. Finally, just before I was about to go out and clean off my van, I called the secretary of my department to see if things were any better up in Michigan. She said that she’d call the person who makes the decision about when to close campus and call me right back, and sure enough the campus was in the process of closing up. That saved me a lot of hellish driving and gas money, although in order to make up for the snow day the universe seemed to turn everything else against me that day, from huge mistakes I made in the stuff I was working on at home that day to the Red Wings’ awful performance that evening. I should be careful what I wish for, I know.

I dislike the cold and snow enough to start with, but these past couple of winters I have been getting the absolute worst cases of winter skin I can ever remember having. The back of my right hand is almost always super-dry and covered with tiny cuts, and no amount of moisturizer seems to make things better. What makes this all the more inexplicable is that I’ve been spending far more time indoors than out these past couple of winters since I’m not traipsing around UT’s campus all day and all. I don’t know if this has something to do with my age or something related to conditions inside the house, but it has become an absolute pain to deal with here. When I stop at Kroger on the way home from work tonight, I may very well pick up a couple of medicated mositurizing lotions, just to see if they’ll help any more than the moisturizers I’ve been using.

Looking at the forecast ahead makes me want to go kick around Punxsatawney Phil. Perhaps I got spoiled by having a couple of thaws so early in the season, but it looks like we’re not going to climb above freezing for a long time now. Between the blowing and drifting snow on the roads, snow-blindness (which has always been a huge problem for me since I’m so nocturnal), the cold, the dry air and what it’s doing to my hands, and everything else related to the cold and snow, I’m beginning to question the wisdom of me staying in this part of the country any longer than I absolutely have to. I enjoy the familiarity I have with the Northwest Ohio region, and I still think that there’s no more beautiful land on this planet than what you’ll find in the upper half of Michigan’s lower peninsula, but worrying about hurricanes or earthquakes instead of freezing my you-know-what off would at least be a nice change of pace.