Let’s not talk about the weather

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I don’t want to say that I dislike driving in fog, but it’s not exactly my favourite weather. Driving in the fog in Toledo isn’t so bad, but yesterday we had just a tremendous amount of fog all day long, and getting up here to campus proved to be quite difficult. I’m used to driving in the fog in the suburbs and such, where there are always lots of things lit up to help keep me on track. Up here in rural Michigan, though, the lights just weren’t there to help guide me, and then to make matters worse we still had a considerable amount of snow on the ground. Between the whiteness of the fog and the whiteness of the snow, I had problems even orienting myself to where I was, and I think half of the time I was driving last night I was doing so merely out of memory of having made this trip so often these past six months or so. It wasn’t as much of a problem as driving on icy roads, but it was fairly difficult. I suppose I should just be glad that all those years of video gaming have helped me with my reflexes, and that I still have perfect vision with which to see things. (It got worse when I drove home late that night in the dark, but I think it was actually harder in the daytime when everything was just so white.)

The fog alone would have made the day remarkable enough in and of itself, but then late last night as I was finishing some stuff up online, the sky lit up. Somehow, in the beginning of February, we managed to have not only a thunderstorm but one of the strongest thunderstorms I can remember having for quite some time. Perhaps I was just hearing the thunder better because there weren’t any leaves on the trees to buffet the sound, but for a good two hours there we got hit pretty hard with rain and thunder and lightning. I’m just glad we didn’t lose power, because I was doing some pretty important stuff online and a blackout would have really screwed things up for me. As if that weren’t odd enough, we went from about 45 degrees late that evening when I came home from teaching, up to 55 or so while the thunderstorm was going on in the dead of night, and then when I woke up today we were back down to 45. We’ll drop back below freezing again in a few hours, and there’s a "wintry mix" in the forecast for tomorrow morning.

We seem to be out of the dead of winter at this point, which is important for me because it means I’ll be able to go out to the garage to work out more regularly. The garage is only half-heated — it’s usually only 55 or 60 out there when I go to work out — and I don’t feel comfortable working out when it gets really cold out there because I worry that it puts me at a greater risk to get sick. The warmer weather also means I’ll be more likely to go out to the local parks to walk or take photos, and yes, I will be taking more photos for the Website here soon. I just need to make time for that, and making time for things hasn’t been so easy since I started teaching multiple classes this semester. I’m having to switch my schedule around here so I have more time during my "peak" hours, and although I hate doing much of anything before I’ve had the chance to shower in the morning, those early-morning hours are an ideal time for me to work on my creative pursuits. Maybe I’m just too much of a clean freak, I don’t know.

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