balls, snow balls

Last year, in what was arguably the worst winter season up around our area that most could remember, Jeff and I had exactly no snow days. We made it to work and back home every day, regardless of whether it took our normal two hours or hemorrhaged into a four hour ordeal. And no wrecks or wipeouts.

This year so far, we've had only two somewhat minor snow falls and in the first, we plowed the truck into a tree and with the second, falling last night, we couldn't even make it to work. Not that we didn't try, though. We left a few minutes early at 4:40am and diligently navigated through the seven powdery inches that had yet to be scrapped this morning all the way to Port Jervis where we pick up I-84. Unfortunately, the entrance ramp to 84 is this long, curvy thing so when we made it around the curve, we could finally see the interstate had been completely shut down and miles and miles of cars and trucks were at a dead stop. So carefully and quite illegally, I backed down the long, winding entrance ramp in reverse and we called it a day. Official snow day which, while sounding nice, is actually a huge pain in the ass as my boss left for vacation to day and this was going to be my first day in charge meaning I'm trying to monitor and do damage control remotely from home.

On the other hand, I have a roaring fire started, coffee on and bacon thawing and literally nothing to do but cruise the internet and check my voice-mail. Jeff actually went back to bed as the prospect of sleeping in on weekday past 4am just doesn't ever happen.