Random Musings

Not!

All week long the weathercasters have been predicting a monster storm here in Georgia. That should have been a sign. Nothing gets the weather people here more worked up than the threat of some snow and ice. In grand dramatic fashion, they showed us over and over the awesome mass of precipitation slowly rolling our way as if the Blob (from the horror movie) was coming to roll over us and swallow us all up.

At school, people were gingerly talking, whispering really that maybe, perhaps, we might. we could possibly get a snow day. You see, it's bad luck to just come out and say that you want one. You have to sneak up on it, dance around it, not let it know that you suspect it may be on its way. The kids were excitedly making plans for what they were going to do on their day off: sleep, talk on the phone, play video games all day, etc.

I, however, remained skeptical. It's happened too many times that the weatherman got us all geeked up, the school system sent out electronic dispatches detailing to us the prodcedure for "Inclement weather", we all tiptoed around it, whispering our hopes for an unscheduled day off, only to have our hopes dashed. The storm would fizzle out either before it could get to us, come too early in the day for its effects to last into the next morning and keep us home, or it showed up and about halfway through, just went impotent and left us high and dry.

Same story, different day- that was yesterday.

It rarely snows here in Georgia, but on my way home from work, it was as if someone was having this giant pillow fight in the sky, split the pillows in the process, and had the feathers going everywhere. Great big feathery crystals, landing on the cars, the streets, the sidewalks, but instantly disappearing because the ground was too warm.

By the time I made it home and went to get the mail the snow was beginning to accumulate on the top of the box. I noticed that it had gotten noticeably colder in the forty-five minutes or so that it took me to leave school, stop by the grocery store for a few just-in-case items, and make it home.

By six yesterday evenning, I could hear ice crystals pelting the bay window panes in the bedroom as I lie reading a book, and for just a short while, I had a flicker of hope that things might work out. Snow would be good, but an ice storm would be an even better in terms of persuading the school system to do the responsible thing and shut schools down for the day.

Alas, after a couple of hours, the pelting of ice gave way to the rhythmic pounding of rain. As we've been operating under drought conditions here, the rain was most welcome, but it melted the snow, and I knew the air wasn't cold enought to turn it into ice.

Watching the news before I went to bed, I followed the scrolling names at the bottom of the screen: school systems that had decided to shut down for today in anticipation of poor traveling conditions. Each time, the alphabet would jump past the name of mine.... Cherokee County Schools...Dalton School System.... I work for Cobb.

This morning, I got up when the clock went off. Holding out one last hope that my initial hunch had been wrong, and that something nasty had developed overnight, I turned on the news and again watched the names scroll by.

Then I put on my clothes and went to work.

Curses, foiled again.