The White Stuff

Share

Our first snowfall of the year wasn’t too far off-schedule; we normally get our first accumulation sometime in the last third of November, and this year it came this past Saturday. As is my tradition, I play Björk’s Gling-Gló during the first snowfall, partly because I remember buying it on my winter break that year I went to Antioch from a locally-owned music shop, and partly because those of us who grew up watching A Charlie Brown Christmas will, for better or for worse, always associate soft jazz music with the season. The next day we warmed way up above freezing and it all melted away. Temperatures dropped again soon after, though, and last night we had an inch fall on us that will probably be on the ground here for some time to come.

Given how long of a drive I have to and from work, having the roads get snowed on becomes an even bigger hassle for me; I’m used to doubling my estimated driving times to get to and from someplace when it’s been snowing, but not when that place is over a half-hour away. Yesterday I asked my students about how well Michigan keeps their roads clean (about as well as they keep the roads repaired, which is to say not at all), and they helped me find an alternate route to take to campus that should be plowed more frequently than my normal route. What particularly concerns me is that I heard that last year, when down here in Ohio the whole county I’m in shut down for two straight days because of a huge snow emergency, MCCC still had classes going on because the snow wasn’t so bad up there. Obviously there’s no way I’m going to break the law to go up to campus, no matter how much I like my job, but the problem I run into is that I don’t get paid for the days I don’t teach. I suppose this is another reason for me to work on getting a tenured position as quickly as I can, so I can get salaried and be able to take the odd day off over the winter if I don’t feel like fighting the roads. (There were at least two accidents on the highway in our backyard this afternoon alone, and the roads didn’t look to be that bad.)

All of this leads up to another interesting dilemma, because I’m scheduled to go to Cleveland for a DDR tournament this Saturday, and sure enough there’s the dreaded “wintry mix” in the forecast that day. The last time I went to Cleveland for a tournament back in February the roads were hazardous from snow and ice, and I wound up arriving about ten minutes too late to register for the tournament. (Not that I had any shot of winning, but it’s the thought that counts.) I don’t like that I’m having to hold off on making a decision about whether or not to go until the last minute (particularly given all of the baking I’ll be doing for the tournament over the next couple of days), but I suppose that it’s really out of my hands. Even though I’ve lived up here all of my life, I still can’t get used to how, in these coldest months, the weather can mess up my schedule so much.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.