Dispatch from Wednesday, 12:29 pm.

[fflo]

The temperature out there, instruments indicate, is -4 and falling.  Electrical, heating and hot water systems all operational.  Provisions well stocked.  Cats extra huddly.  Hoodie on wet head.

Sometimes it feels a little like The Martian, which I think I was telling y'all I recently saw again, except I have it a whole lot easier than he, and conditions outside the Hab aren't nearly so hostile, and I don't have to venture out into it to save my life, and I have cats fer company.  More often it reminds me of Senior Week at my little liberal arts college, when just the seniors were still on campus, waiting for graduation, but the cafeteria was closed, and the days seemed quiet and slow and organized around what the next meal would be.

After the 5 a.m. alert for the snow day Monday, I arranged with Admin to get the phone calls (to landline and cell) that I was getting (simultaneously to the text alert) turned off.  When it was all going off at once, I knew without looking what it meant, but it woke everyone in the place, and that's a bit much.  Plus it seemed like more of an emergency than it was.  Not quite I-live-in-Hawaii-and-got-THAT-alert emergency, but y'know.

Yesterday I was still in the office when the call was made for today.  Chris's and my phones went off at once, along with every landline in the building, in the high chirp of our new phones.  Kinda weird they looped the office phones in to the alert system, but w/e.  This one mathematician told me, on his way out, that he was responsible for the Executive Editor changing his mind, after saying that he had no intention to give us the time off.  I dunno.  I dunno why I'm talking about it now.

My friend is out there trying to have a fun day off but finding some establishments are closed.  Others I hear tell of seem determined to have as regular a day as possible.  It's definitely chilly anywhere near any of my windows, and we have another 10+ degrees colder to get.  The wind's supposed to slow a bit by early tonight, however, and wind chills are currently predicted to bottom out at -34 in our berg.  But it's not predicted to get back above 0 until Friday morning at, like, 9 a.m.

I started reading a paperback copy of The Lady in the Lake I've had around forever, thinking maybe I'll like it better than the movie.  So far I've learned what a PBX is and I've talked back to Chandler once, when he described a woman working in an office as wearing a man's tie.  ("What man's?")  (Hahahaha.)

My ex-chorus's director was arrested yesterday, separately from his famous partner, and the two are in the county hoosegow awaiting extradition to Texas.  Somehow the Houston cops got enough evidence to charge them for the 2010 rape.  I don't know which is more of a miracle:  that, or the chorus FINALLY taking the accused (and its singing his praises) off their website.  This after their apparently reasserting support for him just in the past few weeks, deciding to stick with him.  Not a Board of Directors, but Kings of Denial.

Up next in Polar Vortex Home Movies: Kansas City Confidential (1952), with Jack Elam, the Steve Buscemi of his day.  A much more interesting face than most of the faces in the movie with him.

Comments

[pane-carasau079.livejournal.com]

I used to love those days when campus was empty and you had no clue who was there vs. home. It felt extra cozy, especially if you were well stocked. I remember my first Michigan snowstorm. The days before, I told all my professors I couldn't wait until it snowed and one of them said, "We know you're not from here if you're excited for it." :)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

:)

My first winter up here was unusually mild--- I didn't know what I was getting into. I'm still charmed by how powdery beautiful the snow is. Soft and wafts, lots of the time. More often that not.

This year we've hardly gotten any snow, comparatively. This cold snap coming late-ish in a winter that's been pretty easy makes it easier to take, somehow. In only a handful of weeks, we'll be turning the corner toward Spring. And this experience will make it very much welcome, as it always seems to be.

[pane-carasau079.livejournal.com]

<333

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Fortunately the library is open. Though now that the sun is down, my car will be cold. It made some hesitant noises when I started it to come here. I just hope it starts when I go. I'll have to be sure to head out well before the library closes so I can come back in if I have to.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

The idea of the car breaking down somewhere was a big part of my deciding not to go out. Sure, the odds are against it, but the bummer of it happening would be much greater than usual. And getting help would likely take forever.

Hope you got out and got home and are doing okay in your little set of boxes.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Car started up fine, with just some momentary bad sounds. And the hot chocolate from the library vending machine meant that I wasn't even chilled on the drive to Meijer (where I walked around 5 times to get my token healthy lifestyle choice).

Reading about winter in Michigan for people from elsewhere, I'll put in my 2 cents. I grew up in Kalamazoo (OK, technically in Portage, next door, but that sounds so pedestrian--at least I was born in Kalamazoo, so that counts for something), where there's lake effect snow. So I find Ann Arbor less snowy than where I grew up, but just as cold.

Snow is so much more fun when you're a kid. Snow days are glorious bonus holidays, and there's sledding, and snow men, and snow forts, and sliding on ice without worrying about breaking something if you fall.

But now that I teach for a living, there's always that special joy when I find out that Schoolcraft College is closed, even if I don't hear about it on the AM radio station that plays the current hits of 1970.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

:)

You remind me of a Twitter comment the other day, in which the poster reported being a little sad for kids now, the way they just find out online whether their schools are closed, instead of the excitement of watching a scroll across the bottom of their TVs "like it's the NFL draft".

I mean, I don't know how that's like the NFL draft, but still I got his point.