Snowstormed and Salmon-ized

Fall semester: day fifty-five

Despite its relative shortness, it's not exactly been the best week in Brandonworld(tm). This is generally par for the course, so to speak; I'll have good weeks, not-so-good weeks, and then absolutely miserable, horrible weeks just like everyone else. This week was leaning more towards the "not-so-good."

For one, it's really cold. When I say that I mean it in a fairly subjective sense, of course. For anyone living in Kansas, weather is a really fickle mistress; there's a saying out here that goes something along the lines of "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." While it's not usually that extreme, that's not an incredibly inaccurate statement. Hence why it was 80 degrees on Tuesday, 64 on Wednesday morning when I drove to campus at 7AM, and four hours later it was 35 with a mix of rain and snow.

No, I'm not kidding. Mark the date: November 2 is when my part of Kansas (south-central) got its first snow of the year. Let me tell the story.

As briefly mentioned, by 11-12 or so on Wednesday, it was nasty outside. A huge storm system had swept through Colorado (which, if you know your U.S. geography, is directly west of Kansas) and dumped a ton of snow on Denver and most of the western halves of Kansas and Nebraska. It was tracking north, for the most part, which meant that the worst we were expected to get in the Wichita area was a fair amount of cold and rain, as the temperature was still expected to hang above freezing. Barely, but above it, around 35 or so. So, within the span of four hours or so, the temperature dropped nearly thirty degrees and the rain had started to move in. By noon, it had gotten harder and was starting to mix with a little wet snow. Nothing major, but a stark contrast to the previous day's 80 degrees and sun. Undergrads oblivious to the weather were still in t-shirts and shorts through this, as well, and looked quite uncomfortable. Me? I knew what was coming (because I have no life and constantly monitor the weather forecast), so I had already dressed in layers for the day.

By about 6:30, most of the rain/snow mix had stopped; it was still sprinkling mist from time to time, but with this storm system came 30-50mph north winds, which made everything much, much colder than it appeared. 6:30PM is also the time that I leave campus on Wednesday nights to make my way to wherever we're holding our poetry workshop class that week -- something that I am incredibly opposed to, but of course, no one listens to me about anything (meaning, we have a classroom on campus for class. It's a good classroom, so...what's so wrong with just fucking using it? Almost all of us are on campus on Thursday anyhow). Anyway, for the last few weeks we've been holding it at a reading room attached to a used bookstore in town, a place that's somewhat convenient for the few people who live in/around town or around that area, but a nightmare of traffic to get to for the rest of us, especially in the evenings in the middle of the week in downtown Wichita. I'm not opposed to having class outside the normal classroom, but for fuck's sake, it should at least be held somewhere on campus. There are dozens of meeting rooms in different buildings (such as in the library or some of the lecture halls) that would certainly be available at 7PM on a Wednesday.

Anyway.

Getting there wasn't a big deal on Wednesday night; the weather was not nasty yet. I was also the first and only person there up until about five minutes before the class was scheduled to start, which made me wonder if it had been canceled (because, of course, if it were, few classmates -- if anyone -- would bother to tell me). As I knew what was coming weather-wise for the rest of the night, once the instructor arrived and it was only he and I there, I made the humble request that we get our shit done and get out of there as early as possible, as half of us if not more live outside of Wichita in various cities and towns around the area; I live in Newton (22 miles north), at least one of us lives in Park City (about 10 miles north), another in Maize (around 10-15 miles west) and another in Emporia (about 90 miles north). The rest are either scattered around the city or in the other suburbs within 5-10 miles. Rain and mist was supposed to mix with snow and become all snow around 8 or 9, and class runs until 9:45, so my motion to please-get-our-shit-done-and-leave wasn't just for me, it was for everyone involved in the class that would have to drive any real distance in it. I'll also remind you that at that point, I had not winter-tested the Monte Carlo yet, and had no idea how it handled in nasty weather, snow, and slick roads. I would, ultimately, find out.

So, to make a longer story shorter and to get to the point, our professor agreed and dismissed class around 9PM instead of 9:45. At that point, I had been lucky -- when class dismissed, it hadn't started raining/snowing again yet, but it was getting very cold, and the wind had picked up considerably. I was beginning to think that perhaps the weather forecast had been premature, and that maybe I'd been overreacting to it.

Ohhh no. Hell no I hadn't.

By the time I'd driven from the bookstore to the I-135 onramp (perhaps five miles or so), it had started coldly raining. Hard. I've driven in rain in the Monte Carlo before. Rain's not a problem; I have new wiper blades and a decent defroster/defogger in the car, so I'm not really concerned about that as much.

By the time I'd made it far enough north to Park City (again, about 9-10 miles north of Wichita) the rain had gotten harder and had begun to mix with snow. The winds were blowing very hard, from the north, so I was driving into the wind. This not only made the car sluggish (keeping the pedal down to remain even remotely close to the speed limit) but it cut visibility considerably. I turned the heat/defroster on max to keep the windows from fogging over.

By the time I'd made it three or four miles north of Park City, it was all snow. Hard snow, blowing snow. We're talking near-whiteout conditions here, which isn't pleasant when you just happen to smack into it going 70mph on the interstate in a fifteen-year-old boat-sized car. As the roads were already wet and the ground wasn't frozen yet (remember, 80 degrees on Tuesday), the snow wasn't sticking to anywhere but the roads and to my car. Five or six miles north of Park City is an interstate rest stop. It is exactly eight miles from the rest stop to my house (I've calculated it). By the time I passed the rest stop, full heavy snow was in effect, and the roads were slick and somewhat slushy. The interstate was almost completely empty; smarter folks had either pulled off at the rest stop (which was filled to capacity with every vehicle imaginable) or had deliberately stayed off the roads as much as possible. I did not, unfortunately, have that luxury; I had to get home and go to bed, as I get up at 5AM on Thursday mornings.

By the time I got to Newton, slush was collecting on my hood/lights/edges of my windshield, and my wipers were on full blast. The snow was whipping the town so hard and so fast that when it fell, it didn't have time to melt on the roads. When I stopped at intersections or stoplights, the car rocked in the wind, and the roads were slick enough to where, when the light turned green and I started moving again, my front tires spun a bit. Because I am hyper-vigilant when I drive and know exactly where my car is and how it handles at all times (since, y'know, I've put 2,200 miles on it since June) I was able to make it home safely -- but damn, I wish my hand-me-down digital camera took good night pictures, because that whiteout was something to behold, to be sure. I texted my friend Jay to tell him just how hellish it was once I got home. When I finally went to bed around 11:30 that night, it was still going pretty hard.

When I left the house around 7 on Thursday morning, you wouldn't have known anything had happened. Seriously. Skies were clear, everything had dried up/melted off/what-have-you, and it was just cold. But at least, in my proverbial trial-by-fire Wednesday night, I now know how the car handles in slick, nasty conditions, as well as how it responds to Kansas cold: fairly well for the most part. At least for the moment. This just goes to show you, however, what living in Kansas is like; this will be my third winter here, and it's never fun -- the state's weather patterns seem to have no concept of "autumn"; it's all extremes. Summer one day, then winter the next, continuing until mid-March.

So yeah, that was fun.

Yesterday, as you know, was a shorter Thursday for me; since Tim O'Brien was doing his readings/meet-ups on campus, my evening class was canceled. Aside from the normal weekly meeting with my supervisor and my hour in the Writing Center, I had canceled my office hours and could end my day early if I wanted to. I got held up by a student for a few minutes after leaving the Writing Center, and then talked with Suri and my poetry professor for a while, so I was unable to get to the Tim O'Brien meet-up on time at 2; I gave up on it. I'm not the kind of person who shows up late to such things; I'm either there on time or early, or I don't go at all. So, with the rest of my day freed up, I went home...where, though I was planning to get a jump-start on my weekend work, I summarily passed out after about an hour or so. I didn't wake up until nearly 1AM. Apparently my body was telling me I needed the sleep, and forcefully took it from me.

However, this post wouldn't be complete without mentioning the salmon shirt.

A few weeks ago, when I was using the new tie-dye kits my friend Jane sent me, I had some leftover dye after making a batch of shirts. Since I wear them so frequently in the colder months underneath t-shirts and button-ups, I decided to dye my white thermal (read: long underwear) tops. I made one in blue, one in green, and one in the mix of my last bit of red and yellow, making it orange. Orange. Remember this, it's important.

Today, I wore the orange shirt underneath a t-shirt and didn't think much of it. It was cold, I wanted a thermal top, etc. Except it only looks orange in the lights of my own home and in sunlight. In the fluorescent lighting in all of the buildings at school, however, it's not orange. It is, according to Suri and most of my students, salmon pink, if not outright pink. I will stress, of course, that this is not the case under normal, non-fluorescent lighting. Under regular lighting, it's still orange. Either that or I've gone colorblind. When I washed it in the overnight hours, it's still orange, at least to me. Yet everyone who sees it immediately calls it salmon or pink. This was so not the effect I was going for, and it drove me up the wall today. Hearing it referred to as salmon does not irritate me, really. Pink does, despite the obsession/phase I went through a few years back, during which I loved everything pink (don't ask, it's a long story).

I have one bottle of brown dye left that I'll never use for anything else; this weekend, in addition to everything else I have to do, I'm letting it soak in the brown dye to either turn it completely brown or to see if it'll morph into a maroon-ish color. The point is, it'll no longer be salmon. And I'm pretty sure brown looks brown in all light.

So that's about all that's going on right now; I have a lot of work ahead of me this weekend, including a lot of grading, reading, and writing. This is also the week I'll need to write out the bills, so any shopping I have to do at Walmart (because, of course, there's always something I need) will be strict, tight, and mercifully short. I'm still good on money for the time being; it'll be around this time next month when I'll be metaphorically sweating bullets trying to budget for all of my expenses, what with the need for an oil change rapidly approaching for the Monte Carlo in the next 1,000 miles or so and my 6-month car insurance payment coming due. Depending on how much extracurricular driving I do between now and the end of the semester, I may not need the oil change until around Christmas or so; I can roughly calculate that I'll drive the car another 700 miles or so over the course of the last five true weeks of the semester, which would leave me about 300 miles to spare. On the plus side, after it got colder outside this past week or so, it hasn't leaked a drop of coolant, and its levels are normal (I checked them yesterday). No more oil problems either. Over the winter (read: Christmas) break, I'll barely be driving the car at all, so it'll get a nice vacation in the garage most of the time I'm on vacation myself.

There are other things happening involving school and my (nearly nonexistent) social life as well, but nothing major to report as of yet. I'm sure I'll cover those things when they come up, if they do. Right now, however, much of the focus of my life must revolve around the work I do for my classes and students. Again, November is rough for all involved, but as long as I properly manage my time and don't procrastinate on things, I have enough wiggle room to get everything done in an admirable fashion.