Hat on Top, Coat Below
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Snow Day
December 23, 2004
Just getting to work feels like enough of an accomplishment for today, as the first big snow storm of this winter arrived overnight. It would have been a good day to stay home or at least go in late, after the worst had passed, but I had an important customer meeting scheduled so Mr. Karen and I got up early so we could shovel the first six inches of fluffy white off the driveway (we did a path down the sidewalk, too, even though we don’t expect much foot traffic, what with the schools being off for winter break already) before I left. I was about a third of the way to my customer when the lead implementer on the project called me to say the person I was going to meet with wasn’t coming in, a fact he’d found out only by calling their office. So much for the promise they made yesterday afternoon to call us if it turned out that the snow was indeed going to force a change in plans. At least I’d only wasted about a half hour of my time–the other Purple Systems person heading in for the meeting was over an hour into his drive when he got the news. Since I was already on the road and making it through the slop okay, I turned around and headed to the office instead of home.
I was pleasantly surprised at how sanely people were driving. Sure, a few cars were in the ditch, and some people didn’t want to conform to the ad hoc lanes that had been established in the absence of visible markings on the pavement, but mostly everyone was going reasonable speeds for the conditions and being polite about letting others merge. I only had two scary moments–getting up a ramp from one freeway to another which two semis had slipped partly off of (I stopped completely well back from the worst part and watched the vehicles in front of me get stuck and then fishtail out before driving very slowly around the trucks) and making it into the parking lot here at the office (the driveway had drifted over).
Logging in to my e-mail after I arrived (only and hour and fifteen minutes after I usually do), I saw a note from my boss encouraging people to stay home–he was going to. Oh well; too late for that now. Actually, I’m glad to be here. It should be pretty quiet, what with so many people staying home and not much work getting done at the customers because it’s the day before a holiday for most people, plus it was just announced that we’re getting pizza brought in for lunch as a reward for making it in. Also, now I can retrieve Mr. Karen’s Christmas present, which I had stashed in my cabinet here and forgot to take with me when I left last night. (I also forgot my purse, but at least I realized that when I got in the car so all I had to do was call one of my coworkers who was still in the building to come let me in, because of course my security thingy was in my purse.)
The snow is only supposed to keep falling for another few hours, so by the time I head out the road crews will have had plenty of time to plow and salt and sand, so getting home should be much less time consuming than getting here was. Then I’m off for five days–yay for sleeping in and spending more than a couple hours a day with my husband.
One year ago, I’d just finished a baby quilt.
Two years ago, I wrote about quilts not made by me.
