Snow Day(s)......

I was a little -- no, a LOT -- suspicious of the weather forecast when we went to bed last night. They had started talking about snow so early and so frequently that I guess I was afraid it wouldn't pan out. Don't get me wrong - I don't hate my job, but ANY free day out of school is a bonus.

I woke up this morning and had the feeling that when I looked out the window there would be NOTHING on the ground. Our school district had already canceled school as of last night, so I don't know what I was worried about. I needn't have worried - there was a solid sheet of white stuff on the ground.

The picture above is of our front steps. It's hard to see where one step ends and the next one begins. I did what I could with a regular shovel to get most of it off before it could freeze again. I could easily have added #51 to my list: Shovel snow. This Southern girl surely didn't expect she would ever have to do THAT.

Gus is slightly perplexed by it all. He can't figure out why he has to JUMP to get from one step to the next. And why the ground keeps caving out from under him when he walks.

Hubby has been diligent about feeding the birds. We have two bird feeders, and he also scattered seed under the tree.

This is the view from the end of our road looking up toward the entrance to the subdivision. Our neighbor tried to drive up the hill not long after I took this picture. She couldn't make it, so she backed all the way back to her house. I have no idea where she thought she had to go; she works at one of the local high schools, so I KNOW she didn't have to go to work.

Above is my mother-in-law's house. We went to make sure she had everything she needed and that her house was warm enough. Boy was it. We didn't stay long; it was almost suffocating in there. She has gas heat, so even if we lose electricity, she should be fine.

Hubby and Gus, accompanied by Lucy and Enzo, the dogs that roam the neighborhood freely. They would really like to play with Gus, especially Lucy, but Gus does not play well with others.

Lucy and Enzo. I don't know if that's really his name. It might be Endzone, which I think would be infinitely cuter. But I think the little girl who lives at his house said his name was a character from something. Any ideas?

The magnolia tree in mother-in-law's back yard.

Snow on the back railing of mother-in-law's house. Hubby said it was six inches of snow.

This is the main road just outside our subdivision. There had been a few cars up and down the road by the time we walked up there, but not many. The slush was already starting to freeze into a solid sheet.

Needless to say, we aren't having school again tomorrow. Yay! And I'm not too confident about Wednesday either, since temperatures aren't supposed to get above freezing tomorrow. No way this stuff is going to melt, and with so many rural roads in our county, driving will still be treacherous.

Shucks. I guess I'll just have to read, play the Wii, work on my quilt, and drink hot apple cider.

I'm kind of liking this rehearsal for retirement!

Must Be All that Global Warming......

We are bracing for a fierce winter storm here in the Deep South. "Fierce" as in the kind of weather that some parts of the country endure on a pretty much constant basis for six months out of the year. The weather people are predicting anywhere from 1" to 6" of snow for our area Sunday night, Monday, and possibly into Tuesday.

That means there won't be a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk in any store in Northeast Georgia. (As I heard someone say once, and surprisingly it wasn't Hubby, "Why bread and milk? Why not the really necessary things, like beer and toilet paper?") People will run around madly tomorrow and Sunday, buying generators and kerosene heaters and acting like the world as we know it is coming to an end.

If we do end up with any accumulation, it means that any reasonable people will hunker down inside and try to stay warm. The ones without any reason, without any sense, without any brains, without any regard for personal or public safety, will get in their cars and traipse up and down the road. Several of those will tow OTHERS without any of the above behind their cars on skis (they will probably be WATER skis, since we are in the Deep South), trash can lids, kiddie swimming pools, and anything else they can create makeshift sleds out of.

If we get the kind of accumulation the weather folks are talking about (and Hubby points out they are only being shown from the waist up again), school will be closed on Monday. And possibly Tuesday. Because we all know it doesn't take much snow to close schools in Georgia.

The weather folks tonight were warning folks about the possibility of losing their electricity, and this is where things could get ugly. We have a wood stove, so we won't get cold. We can cook on it if we have to, so we won't go hungry. But we could find ourselves UNABLE TO WATCH FOOTBALL ON TV. Even worse, we could find ourselves WITHOUT INTERNET SERVICE.

I think I will spend Sunday making sure all of my battery-operated devices are fully charged: my iPad, my Kindle, my Nintendo DS, my laptop, both cameras. Hubby is supposed to go do some temp work with the Pepsi folks Monday, but he says he will just call them and tell them he isn't coming if it gets too bad. He didn't have that option when he worked for them full-time; folks HAD to have their Pepsi, bad weather and dangerous roads be damned.

Have a good weekend. Throw another log on the fire and stay warm.

It's Official......

I'm a die-hard. As if there were any doubt before.

It DID snow. It snowed hard here.

And the gymnastics meet DID NOT get canceled.

So we went. Hubby didn't want to, as it was snowing hard when we left home. His fear ... and secretly mine too ... was that during the meet, everything would freeze hard. And then we would have the 30-minute drive home.

I almost couldn't enjoy the meet, because I was so nervous about driving home in the snow. I don't know that I'd ever done that before.

It wasn't icy when we left the Coliseum, thank goodness, and I drove veeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy slllllloooooooowwwwwwwwlllllllyyy all the way home. I don't think I ever got over 40 mph. The roads weren't bad, just slushy, but I still didn't take any chances. Tomorrow everything will be a solid sheet of ice, as temperatures have already started dropping.

Since we assume everything will be icy tomorrow, we are NOT going to the beach after all. And I'm okay with that. I'll explain in tomorrow's post why we were going to go to the beach at such a stupid time of the year in the first place.

Oh, and we won the gymnastics meet. Toppled the #3 team in the country. I'm glad we went.

But I'm gladder we're home.

Feeling a Little Cheated.....

They're calling for snow here in the Deep South tomorrow. Oddly enough, the farther south you go, the MORE snow you are likely to see.

I'm kind of bummed out about it.

Usually all it takes is the hint, the ghost, the mere suggestion of a snowflake to close schools around here. Schools are already closing for tomorrow in our area, and it isn't supposed to start snowing until around lunchtime.

That means that at the very least we should have a short day tomorrow.

Except tomorrow is already a day off. It was originally a teacher work day, which is the next best thing to a holiday because the grown-ups get to gossip a lot more, go out for lunch, and leave earlier than we usually do on a Friday.

Then our governor decided schools needed to furlough teachers an additional three days this semester, and tomorrow became a FWOP day. Furlough Without Pay. They actually indicate it as such on our paychecks when they deduct it. Yes, I realize I explained it the last time we had a FWOP day.

So the snow tomorrow won't close schools at all. I can sleep in and bum around all day.

Except that I have to drive 40 minutes to my least favorite type of doctor's appointment at 9:30 in the morning.

And if the snow starts after lunch as they are calling for it to do, it will make driving treacherous. At the very time I want to leave to go to the gymnastics meet.

I wish it wouldn't snow. And if it does, I hope the gymnastics meet gets postponed.

But not Saturday or Sunday, as we are supposed to go to the beach.

Unless the snow cancels that too.

I'm too tired to explain THAT one. Story at eleven. Or tomorrow.

Praying for no snow or enough to postpone the gymnastics meet,

Bragger

Snow Day?.......

This is one of the many times that I'm happy to live in the Deep South.

And a little embarrassed at the same time.

The weather forecasters have been screaming SNOW!!!!! for several days now. It was all supposed to happen today, and several school districts announced yesterday that they would be closing early today.

The first few flakes started falling around 3:30 this afternoon, and we took turns going to the window to make sure it was REALLY snowing.

It's still snowing a little, but really not enough to create any problems.

That's the good news.

The other good news is that here in the Deep South, it doesn't TAKE much for schools to close. One flake and BAM! no school. With our lawsuit-happy society, no one wants to take the chance on one errant snowflake getting under the wheel of a several-ton school bus and causing an accident while carrying the three students in our county whose parents don't sit in the car-rider line to take them to school.

And I'm as bad as the students. I'm hoping and praying that enough snow falls that it will freeze on the ground and we won't have school tomorrow. An unexpected day off on a FRIDAY, of all things, is just like Christmas all over again.

You know, Christmas? That two-week break from which we just returned?

We've had two whole days with the students already, so I'm ready for a break.

It's funny how each of the surrounding counties' approaches to closing schools can be so different. When Sweet Girl was in eighth grade, I was teaching in another county. We had a brand-new superintendent, and the snow talk had begun. In what I thought was a knee-jerk reaction, my superintendent canceled classes for the next day, but our HOME county didn't. They took a wait-and-see attitude, and what we saw was ....... nothing. It was supposed to start snowing around lunchtime, so I bundled Sweet Girl off to school. She was mad as a hornet that she had to go to school and I didn't. I reassured her that once the snow started, they would send them home early, and I would be there to greet her with hot chocolate.

Not one flake fell. Not one. Not in our county, not in the county where I taught, not anywhere in our area.

When Sweet Girl stomped off the bus that afternoon, her face looked like a thundercloud.

"You said it was gonna snow!" she growled at me.

And on top of that, there was no hot chocolate.

Doing my snow dance,

Bragger

Springtime in the South.....

I realize it isn't actually spring yet, at least not according to the calendar.

But it's March, fercryingoutloud.


The good news, and I'm not really trying to be smug, is that temperatures are supposed to return to the 70's by the weekend.

Or maybe I AM trying to be smug.

Winter Wonderland.......

Okay, the snow was pretty. And I'm completely okay with being out of school tomorrow. I won't even whine about it being 23 degrees tonight, because it's supposed to be back up to 70 by Friday. I may even be able to ride the Harley to school later in the week.

But our internet is down. I'm having to blog from the Crackberry.

And that's just some kind of wrong.

I can only lose so many consecutive games of Spider Solitaire. Or Inkball. I need my Pioneer Woman fix. I need to read MamaNeena's latest escapades.I was actually grading assignments online when it went down. I tell students all the time that they need a back-up plan, because not having internet is NOT an excuse for not turning their work in. Blah blah blah.
I want my internet.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Snow Flurries.....

A few snow flurries fell around here today, just enough to get the students all excited. We're talking flakes in a quantity that you could count. I am not making this up: A student evidently told others in my room today that it was snowing outside. When someone looked to me for verification (evidently said student doesn't have a very good track record as far as trustworthiness goes), I stuck my head out my window/door and reported that, no, it was NOT snowing. The eye-witness reporter said, "Well, it's snowing over in Ms. Raven's room." I'm sure he meant it was snowing OUTSIDE Ms. Raven's room, but still... Our building isn't that big. It's pretty inconceivable to think it might be snowing on one side of the building and not the other.

It doesn't take much snow around here to get folks excited. If the 12 flakes that fell this afternoon had fallen early this morning, school probably would have been canceled. There wouldn't have been a store in the area that still had milk and bread, and every idiot who had the day off from school or work would have been out riding around at speeds well above the speed limit.

Our next door neighbors moved here from Buffalo, New York last year. She is also a teacher. I'm going to be so embarrassed the first time we have to close schools for a dusting of snow on the ground. There's just no explaining it.
This picture is from January 19th of this year. Notice that my Buffalo neighbor still has her plastic Santa on her porch. It stayed there until March.

If this "blizzard" hadn't occurred on a Saturday, I assure you we would have been out of school anyway.