Spring semester: day twenty-seven
And so we come to my last day of snow-forced "vacation," so to speak, a day where I would've been off anyway.
It's sunny and in the 30s right now, and the snow is melting off little by little. In a bit, I will take the car out of the garage and venture out onto the roads to get some gas and do some shopping for myself and the cats, since I haven't left the house in almost a week due to the weather. My neighbors went to and from work this morning in their little Contour, and they didn't appear to have any trouble, so I'm guessing the roads are fine and will continue to be fine as all of this melts off. I will still be cautious, obviously. Aside from the fact that I need to get a few items from the store and fill the gas tank, my trip out today is really to test that roads theory -- I'll leave the house to go to campus tomorrow at 6:30 in the morning, when it's dark and hard to see things like black ice or packed snow patches on the road before you drive over them, and when it's still cold enough outside for places that were previously just wet the day or night before to have refrozen and become slick. I won't lie when I say I'm still a bit nervous about my trip to campus in the morning, or at least the first three or four miles of it that I'll be driving on more-than-likely-unplowed city streets and residential neighborhoods.
Then again, I've driven the Monte Carlo through ice storms and through snow-packed roads and other shitty weather; I know how she handles and what to expect while driving her, for the most part. I'll still extremely caffeinate myself in the morning to be alert (read: drink most of an entire pot of coffee) before I leave so that I'm a bit more sharp and my reaction time is better.
It's going to be hard going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight; the snow days and my week off here at home has gotten me used to sleeping for nine or ten hours at a time, and unless I go to bed at 5PM, that's not going to happen tonight. Tonight may be one of those "take a sleeping pill at 8PM and let it work" sort of nights, just so I won't lay there awake in my bed until 2AM when I get up at 5. Even now, nearing 1PM, I'm leery of drinking any more coffee, lest it keeps working in my system the rest of the day.
Unfortunately, today is not a day where I have nothing to do; while I've taken care of all of my work for my students -- printing handouts and readying lesson plans and the like -- I told Daisy that the rest of my day will be devoted to reading and studying for comps, and that she shouldn't expect me to be around much until the late evening hours before I go to bed. I'm blogging right now only to kill a bit of time while I fully wake up and let my allergy medicine kick in before going out to run my errands. My allergies before and after these snowstorms have been awful, probably because I've not gotten out of the house much. As the storms rolled in, they went on the attack like crazy, and today -- after they've completely rolled out -- they've attacked again full-force. I've always had crazy weather-related allergies, most of which can be attributed to the low-and-high pressure systems that move through the state at any given time. Sudden drops or spikes in barometric pressure just destroys my sinuses, as do drastic shifts in temperature (like how, in Kansas, it can be 70 one day and 30 the next).
Daisy went to the doctor earlier this week, as mentioned before here in the blog. She does have some sort of virus, more than likely, but also has a sinus infection. The doctor gave her some antibiotics for the sinus infection, and told her that (as she has horrible allergies too, worse than mine) the best thing she could do for her allergies -- so that she doesn't have to be on prescription meds for them her whole life -- would be to move out of Nebraska as soon as possible.
No, I'm not kidding.
"Well, love," I said to her, "depending on where and if I find work, that may not be too hard of a direction to follow."
Daisy expresses a cheerful optimism about most things; she's convinced that we're both going to be successful and comfortable in life, and that "failure isn't an option," wherever we end up or whatever we end up doing.
"You are my sunshine," she tells me, often. At least two or three times a day.
"Do I make you happy? When skies are gray?" I usually answer, somewhat sardonically.
"Yes," she says.
Daisy's parents are going to Florida over Spring Break on vacation. According to Daisy, they're considering moving back there when they retire (they lived there for many years, and a good chunk of Daisy's childhood was spent in Florida).
I mentioned here in the blog a very long time ago that my life could have ended up taking a very different path around 1988 or 1989, as my mother interviewed for a job (of some sort, hell, it was almost 25 years ago and I don't know what it was) at that time in Bradenton, Florida. She didn't take it and we didn't move there, obviously, but I always wondered how differently my life would have been if she had. Somewhere out there, there's a parallel-universe Brandon who played for the Miami Hurricanes football team and got drafted into the NFL. Just sayin'.
"I like how you always write things in your blog instead of telling me to my face," she said to me last night. "It's cute."
"Hm?" I didn't know what Daisy was talking about.
"Oh, like how you cut-and-pasted the email to your mother about how busy you are, and about how you write about what you'll be doing over Spring Break instead of just saying 'honey, I'm not going to be able to come up there,' stuff like that."
I didn't realize this until she mentioned it, but it's true. It's subconscious, really; most of what I write here, Daisy already knows (or at least assumes, anyway). I told Daisy a while back that with comps coming up and the papers I knew I'd have to grade over the break that I would more than likely not be able to make it up there during that time. My entire break is going to be crazy -- I not only have to grade my students' papers quickly in order to include that grade with the students' midterms (which I have about a week to calculate and upload, starting on around the 11th or so) but as mentioned before, I will be burying myself in comps studying and I desperately need to be able to do my taxes over that time as well. Sort of reminds me of every other week-long break I've had off school for the course of the past three years -- there's always a ton of stuff to be done every single day of it. Last year I visited West Virginia over Spring Break, and came home after four days because I also had to grade and finish my massive project for my Editing course. I suppose I should get used to this -- there are no real "hey, you get a week off" vacations in the real world most of the time unless you have an extremely easy and/or well-paying job. Hell, I had to work for eighteen months straight at the grocery store before I qualified for a week's vacation -- I got jacked out of it my first year because I started there at the end of January, and it had to roll over for the next year.
Anyway, on that note, it's now warm and sunny enough to venture out and take care of some responsibilities for the day, so that's what I shall do.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Back to Normal
Spring semester: day twenty-six
When I went to bed last night, a little before 2AM, it was still snowing. Hard. Harder than I've seen it snow in a very long time, and harder than it had been snowing for most of the day yesterday. The wind was whipping drifts into figurative mountains, and my deep footprints -- made with my massive boots, mind you -- to go down and get the mail around 8PM had been completely re-covered. When I went to bed, there was easily eight inches of new snow on the ground since Rocky had kicked back in full-force for the overnight hours, on top of what was already there.
Sometime between then and this morning, the snow stopped, and Rocky moved out.
I awoke this morning shortly before noon (since I'd already canceled my classes, there was no reason to get up early) to bright, clear skies and sunshine. The driveway and street were still covered deeply, with almost a foot of new snow on the ground, and aside from a few tire tracks from across the street (which allowed me to judge depth) the neighborhood had been undisturbed. I came upstairs and logged onto the university's website, thinking to myself yeah, that was definitely enough for them to close down this morning. No way they stayed open after all that snow fell.
Nope. Wrong.
You're kidding me, right?
The university remained open today. This absolutely enraged almost everyone who had anything to do with the university -- it was overall agreed to be a horribly bad move by not only students, but faculty, staff, and even the media. The firestorm of criticisms led the university to, by this evening, offer a press release-style statement explaining themselves to the media:
If by "mixed" they mean "horrific" and "PR nightmare," then yes. Of hundreds of comments on the university's Facebook page for the announcement that they'd be open, not a single one was complimentary. Said comments came from faculty, staff, and students both current and former. Many of them brought up good points:
1. Bad call yesterday, bad call today -- Tons of comments like this, or along these lines, referencing their decision to close yesterday before the snow got bad, and their decision to stay open today when it was much, much worse.
2. I'm a parent, my children are off school, and because of that I couldn't come in anyway. Saw lots of comments like this, as every school district had closed. Every one.
3. 80% of students/faculty/staff can't make it in. -- This one was, according to everyone I've talked to today, mostly accurate. The vast majority of professors and other instructors canceled their classes just like I did -- only those who lived on campus or very close to it were able to make it there today, and even some of those got stuck trying to get out of their driveways.
4. What's more important, safety or money? It's been brought up before that when the university closes, they lose a lot of money for that day. They closed yesterday and didn't need to, so (construed by many students/faculty/staff almost as an act of spite), they opened today when they really, really shouldn't have. Similar to #1.
5. Reports of accidents/power outages on and off campus. Lots of these too, as well as accounts of folks who had tried to come to class and had failed before even making it out of their street or neighborhood, or accounts from people who, even with large 4x4 trucks, almost wrecked numerous times and took more than three times longer to get to school since the interstates and roads about town were so awful.
To put it mildly, it was a clusterfuck. It was a bad move, and one that will have the university taking hell from the public for a long time.
Of those instructors and students able to make it in, I only know of four or five from the entire English department. One of my friends told me that out of a total of 35 students she has in both of her classes, only 8 showed up this morning -- and I'm guessing those are the ones who live on-campus in the dorms. Parker made it in as well, though I don't know what his final tally of "students who showed up" is.
I've also won the donut bet -- as of this morning, the official total at the airport was 6.7 inches for Wichita -- they got a lot less down there than I did up here, but most of that fell in the overnight hours between 9PM and 4AM. I was far enough north to where the storm's arc dropped a bunch more on me as it moved northeast to hit the KC area (four hours northeast of here).
Throughout the day, it actually warmed up a bit and started to melt off -- according to most reports from earlier this evening, the main roads in Wichita are now mostly fine and are cleared off. I can only assume the same applies to the interstates and other highways around the area, but it was certainly not like that this morning, which is why everyone flipped their collective shit.
I emailed my mother, who sent a note telling me she was worried about me (as she'd seen the nastiness on TV this morning) and told her I was okay, and that I would wait until tomorrow to shovel out the driveway, since it was melting off somewhat today. While I went about my afternoon chores and duties of making handouts and the like for my students, I ventured out to the living room to see that (again) my nice neighbor with the tractor had not only plowed the entire street, but had plowed out both sides of the driveway as well, for both me and my neighbors. Here's a photo I took at 5:30 tonight:
Huge difference, right? The man with the tractor does wonderful things.
As mentioned in my last post, before I went to bed last night I emailed the visiting writer and told her I wouldn't be able to make it in today, but included the completed homework assignments she'd given us over our extended, snow-fueled weekend and attached three more of my poems for her to look at as well. She replied this morning saying that she completely understood and that everything was okay, and that we could meet at 1 on Thursday if that worked for me. I graciously accepted and thanked her, telling her I'd see her then. Unfortunately, due to the snow, I had to miss her live reading at the museum on campus tonight -- something that I had been looking forward to seeing. I'll have to ask her how it went and/or apologize for not being able to make it in to hear her.
Life is slowly returning to normal after the snowstorms -- like I said, I'll be able to get out tomorrow to see what the roads are like (and pick up a few necessities for around the house/get gas in the car, more than likely) and on Thursday, I will return to campus for the first time in nine days. My day on Thursday is a long one; I must not only do the visiting writer meeting after I teach, but I need to make up my writing center hour that I missed this afternoon, and I will be collecting my students' workshop drafts -- which I will be grading all weekend. After a long week, a lull in time during which I read all of Emily Dickinson's works and a good chunk of Walt Whitman's, a lull in which I was able to receive Sharon Olds' collection in the mail (C.K. Williams is still on its way) while my other shipments have been delayed, and have been able to get decent sleep and take care of a fair amount of household chores -- life finally begins to get back to normal. And, for the record, that "normal" is going to be a really hectic normal from now until mid-April or so.
Next week is workshop week for my students. Then, my students turn in their papers on the 12th. The 13th is the official midterm point of the semester, which means that I must start calculating midterm grades at that time. The 14th is my last day of teaching before Spring Break, during which time I must be grading quickly so that I can include these papers in said midterm grades. The 15th is the day my final copy of my thesis is due to my director, so I'll have to get it to him by the 14th before I leave campus. The rest of my Spring Break -- while I was originally planning to spend it with Daisy and go to a concert with her in Omaha -- will more than likely be spent massively cramming and reading every day for comps, so that I can prepare myself to take them. I get back to school and start teaching again on March 26th, and between then and April 11th have to teach my students how to do their second papers -- as well as take my comps themselves on April 4 or 5, depending on what day I'm assigned.
AHHHHHH!
Yeah, that's how I feel. Things for me won't start winding down until almost the beginning of May, at which point I'll basically be finished with everything with nothing to show for it but a piece of paper that says I have a Master's degree, since in the meantime I will not have been able to spend a lot of time looking for jobs. And then I'm shoved out the proverbial door of academia and into the real world to watch my bank account slowly dwindle while I desperately look for work, look for anywhere I could work or live just so that I can actually eat and feed the cats. There's not time enough for me to do everything at once, and I don't have the energy to take care of it all at once anymore like I used to -- I'm not a young kid anymore. I run myself ragged with work, stress, and worry, and yet (like last night) I can sleep ten hours and still be tired when I wake up. It's all just so exhausting. I'll probably get some money from family for graduation, but it won't last long. I basically have to save every bit of pay I can between now and May so that I can have a bit of a cushion to live on, or move out of this house on, once school ends.
I told Daisy this tonight, about how busy I will be for the next two months or so and how concerned/worried I am about the future.
"I know it's stressful and scary," she said. "Regardless, I'll do what I can to help you and take care of you, baby. I won't let you fail."
"It's just all so much to deal with at once," I replied. "I'm pretty sure I'll have gray hair by the time May rolls around."
Daisy has two job interviews on Thursday, one of which is for a pretty well-known international company (it rhymes with, um, RayRal). Either one will pay her really well and will allow her to build her savings back up, so I'm excited for her. I'm also really proud of her -- she's been trying to find work since November, and has been having a rough go of it. I'm no stranger to being unemployed myself, you know, so it's not like I don't know how hard it is.
On that note, I'm going to finish up my chores around the house for the night and go to bed. I have a pounding headache (don't know where that came from, really). Tomorrow I will be mostly incommunicado -- I'll be once more burying myself in books and other literature trying my damnedest to get some comps studying done.
When I went to bed last night, a little before 2AM, it was still snowing. Hard. Harder than I've seen it snow in a very long time, and harder than it had been snowing for most of the day yesterday. The wind was whipping drifts into figurative mountains, and my deep footprints -- made with my massive boots, mind you -- to go down and get the mail around 8PM had been completely re-covered. When I went to bed, there was easily eight inches of new snow on the ground since Rocky had kicked back in full-force for the overnight hours, on top of what was already there.
Sometime between then and this morning, the snow stopped, and Rocky moved out.
I awoke this morning shortly before noon (since I'd already canceled my classes, there was no reason to get up early) to bright, clear skies and sunshine. The driveway and street were still covered deeply, with almost a foot of new snow on the ground, and aside from a few tire tracks from across the street (which allowed me to judge depth) the neighborhood had been undisturbed. I came upstairs and logged onto the university's website, thinking to myself yeah, that was definitely enough for them to close down this morning. No way they stayed open after all that snow fell.
Nope. Wrong.
You're kidding me, right?
The university remained open today. This absolutely enraged almost everyone who had anything to do with the university -- it was overall agreed to be a horribly bad move by not only students, but faculty, staff, and even the media. The firestorm of criticisms led the university to, by this evening, offer a press release-style statement explaining themselves to the media:
"A University spokesman says the decision to open was made after most sidewalks and parking lots were cleared. It was a decision that got mixed reviews from students."
If by "mixed" they mean "horrific" and "PR nightmare," then yes. Of hundreds of comments on the university's Facebook page for the announcement that they'd be open, not a single one was complimentary. Said comments came from faculty, staff, and students both current and former. Many of them brought up good points:
1. Bad call yesterday, bad call today -- Tons of comments like this, or along these lines, referencing their decision to close yesterday before the snow got bad, and their decision to stay open today when it was much, much worse.
2. I'm a parent, my children are off school, and because of that I couldn't come in anyway. Saw lots of comments like this, as every school district had closed. Every one.
3. 80% of students/faculty/staff can't make it in. -- This one was, according to everyone I've talked to today, mostly accurate. The vast majority of professors and other instructors canceled their classes just like I did -- only those who lived on campus or very close to it were able to make it there today, and even some of those got stuck trying to get out of their driveways.
4. What's more important, safety or money? It's been brought up before that when the university closes, they lose a lot of money for that day. They closed yesterday and didn't need to, so (construed by many students/faculty/staff almost as an act of spite), they opened today when they really, really shouldn't have. Similar to #1.
5. Reports of accidents/power outages on and off campus. Lots of these too, as well as accounts of folks who had tried to come to class and had failed before even making it out of their street or neighborhood, or accounts from people who, even with large 4x4 trucks, almost wrecked numerous times and took more than three times longer to get to school since the interstates and roads about town were so awful.
To put it mildly, it was a clusterfuck. It was a bad move, and one that will have the university taking hell from the public for a long time.
Of those instructors and students able to make it in, I only know of four or five from the entire English department. One of my friends told me that out of a total of 35 students she has in both of her classes, only 8 showed up this morning -- and I'm guessing those are the ones who live on-campus in the dorms. Parker made it in as well, though I don't know what his final tally of "students who showed up" is.
I've also won the donut bet -- as of this morning, the official total at the airport was 6.7 inches for Wichita -- they got a lot less down there than I did up here, but most of that fell in the overnight hours between 9PM and 4AM. I was far enough north to where the storm's arc dropped a bunch more on me as it moved northeast to hit the KC area (four hours northeast of here).
Throughout the day, it actually warmed up a bit and started to melt off -- according to most reports from earlier this evening, the main roads in Wichita are now mostly fine and are cleared off. I can only assume the same applies to the interstates and other highways around the area, but it was certainly not like that this morning, which is why everyone flipped their collective shit.
I emailed my mother, who sent a note telling me she was worried about me (as she'd seen the nastiness on TV this morning) and told her I was okay, and that I would wait until tomorrow to shovel out the driveway, since it was melting off somewhat today. While I went about my afternoon chores and duties of making handouts and the like for my students, I ventured out to the living room to see that (again) my nice neighbor with the tractor had not only plowed the entire street, but had plowed out both sides of the driveway as well, for both me and my neighbors. Here's a photo I took at 5:30 tonight:
With tomorrow's melting, the remainder should be just wet and/or dry by tomorrow afternoon, which means I'll be able to get out of the house and see what the roads are like before I have to venture back to campus on Thursday morning.
In comparison, here's what my road/driveway looked like shortly before noon, when I got up:
As mentioned in my last post, before I went to bed last night I emailed the visiting writer and told her I wouldn't be able to make it in today, but included the completed homework assignments she'd given us over our extended, snow-fueled weekend and attached three more of my poems for her to look at as well. She replied this morning saying that she completely understood and that everything was okay, and that we could meet at 1 on Thursday if that worked for me. I graciously accepted and thanked her, telling her I'd see her then. Unfortunately, due to the snow, I had to miss her live reading at the museum on campus tonight -- something that I had been looking forward to seeing. I'll have to ask her how it went and/or apologize for not being able to make it in to hear her.
Life is slowly returning to normal after the snowstorms -- like I said, I'll be able to get out tomorrow to see what the roads are like (and pick up a few necessities for around the house/get gas in the car, more than likely) and on Thursday, I will return to campus for the first time in nine days. My day on Thursday is a long one; I must not only do the visiting writer meeting after I teach, but I need to make up my writing center hour that I missed this afternoon, and I will be collecting my students' workshop drafts -- which I will be grading all weekend. After a long week, a lull in time during which I read all of Emily Dickinson's works and a good chunk of Walt Whitman's, a lull in which I was able to receive Sharon Olds' collection in the mail (C.K. Williams is still on its way) while my other shipments have been delayed, and have been able to get decent sleep and take care of a fair amount of household chores -- life finally begins to get back to normal. And, for the record, that "normal" is going to be a really hectic normal from now until mid-April or so.
Next week is workshop week for my students. Then, my students turn in their papers on the 12th. The 13th is the official midterm point of the semester, which means that I must start calculating midterm grades at that time. The 14th is my last day of teaching before Spring Break, during which time I must be grading quickly so that I can include these papers in said midterm grades. The 15th is the day my final copy of my thesis is due to my director, so I'll have to get it to him by the 14th before I leave campus. The rest of my Spring Break -- while I was originally planning to spend it with Daisy and go to a concert with her in Omaha -- will more than likely be spent massively cramming and reading every day for comps, so that I can prepare myself to take them. I get back to school and start teaching again on March 26th, and between then and April 11th have to teach my students how to do their second papers -- as well as take my comps themselves on April 4 or 5, depending on what day I'm assigned.
AHHHHHH!
Yeah, that's how I feel. Things for me won't start winding down until almost the beginning of May, at which point I'll basically be finished with everything with nothing to show for it but a piece of paper that says I have a Master's degree, since in the meantime I will not have been able to spend a lot of time looking for jobs. And then I'm shoved out the proverbial door of academia and into the real world to watch my bank account slowly dwindle while I desperately look for work, look for anywhere I could work or live just so that I can actually eat and feed the cats. There's not time enough for me to do everything at once, and I don't have the energy to take care of it all at once anymore like I used to -- I'm not a young kid anymore. I run myself ragged with work, stress, and worry, and yet (like last night) I can sleep ten hours and still be tired when I wake up. It's all just so exhausting. I'll probably get some money from family for graduation, but it won't last long. I basically have to save every bit of pay I can between now and May so that I can have a bit of a cushion to live on, or move out of this house on, once school ends.
I told Daisy this tonight, about how busy I will be for the next two months or so and how concerned/worried I am about the future.
"I know it's stressful and scary," she said. "Regardless, I'll do what I can to help you and take care of you, baby. I won't let you fail."
"It's just all so much to deal with at once," I replied. "I'm pretty sure I'll have gray hair by the time May rolls around."
Daisy has two job interviews on Thursday, one of which is for a pretty well-known international company (it rhymes with, um, RayRal). Either one will pay her really well and will allow her to build her savings back up, so I'm excited for her. I'm also really proud of her -- she's been trying to find work since November, and has been having a rough go of it. I'm no stranger to being unemployed myself, you know, so it's not like I don't know how hard it is.
On that note, I'm going to finish up my chores around the house for the night and go to bed. I have a pounding headache (don't know where that came from, really). Tomorrow I will be mostly incommunicado -- I'll be once more burying myself in books and other literature trying my damnedest to get some comps studying done.
Madness
Spring semester, day twenty-six
Winter Storm Rocky has hit full-force, though he's hit considerably lighter than they were predicting last night. You wouldn't be able to tell that from looking outside here in Newton, where I have almost a full foot of new snow on the ground -- I can't really tell you how much, but it's still coming down, now, at midnight, hard. The electricity has been flickering for hours on end, every ten minutes or so. There are power outages everywhere, all over Wichita and the surrounding area, and if it's not absolutely essential, it's been closed -- including every school district I can find, thousands of businesses, etc.
Except for one thing.
The university.
Literally every school district has closed. Businesses are closing. Over 1,000 homes are without power in the Wichita metro area, according to Westar's map. Every other small college and/or trade school has closed. Even private and Catholic schools have closed. The university? Still open.
This defies all logical sense.
I'm not one of those whiny brat kids who's like "everyone else is closed, why aren't we closed?" No, I'm far from that. I was born and raised in West Virginia, on top of a mountain, where snow like this was commonplace and we still went to school. And, to top that off, both for high school and college I lived 15-20 miles from school.
I also understand that three of the past four class days have been canceled by these storms -- they closed today, even though it didn't get bad down in Wichita until late this afternoon. Still, that's no excuse -- if the weather's horrible, you close. It's that simple. The safety of your faculty, staff, and students comes first and foremost, especially for a school that's known as a "commuter school," where the vast majority of its students live off-campus and/or out of town.
Update: I have just learned that the 1,000 homes without power has ballooned, in the past 30-60 minutes, to 3,000.
University's still open, folks.
It's madness.
Most of us are assuming they're waiting until morning this time -- no reason to jump the gun, so to speak, as they did today. But even with that, I think they're making a bit of a mistake. It is terrible outside. It's blizzard conditions, and is expected to keep that up until morning.
Further update: Power is out in Valley Center and Maize, on the west side of the city. Maize is where I taught this past summer -- it's not too far (maybe, oh, five or six miles west) from the city's center. Ten at most. It's spreading. It would not surprise me if I lost power here at some point tonight.
Anyway, yes, most of us who teach are assuming that we'll get up in the morning to see the university has closed, but I'm not so sure. Colleagues like Parker have long gone to bed -- he teaches at 8AM and said that if the university remains open, he'll be there (driving his Gigantor Jeep). I told him, basically, that he may as well not bother -- even if he can make it there, he has six students in his 8AM class, and the majority of them probably won't make it in. He doesn't teach again after that until the evening.
I sort of jumped the gun myself -- I knew by this afternoon for a certainty that it would be way, way too difficult to get to campus in the morning, though I waited until 10:30 tonight (to see if the University would close) before I sent out my emails to my students cancelling class. I told them that even if the university doesn't close tonight to A) be sure to watch in the morning to see if it's closed then, and B) to check to see how many of their other professors and instructors will cancel class, because I doubt I'll be the only one if the university remains open. As for their lesson plans, we're picking up where we left off, albeit shifting the schedule a week later.
Aside from that, I told them if they could afford to do so, to stay home and out of this mess of a storm we have beating us down like a red-headed stepchild.
Well, I didn't use that terminology, but you get the drift.
Speaking of drifts, they're bad. Snowdrifts, driven by a near-constant 30+mph wind, have reached two or three feet in some areas, including outside my house and garage. It's crazy. It looks like I live in the arctic. And, once more, there will be shoveling tomorrow and Wednesday if I want to be able to get out of this house on Thursday morning -- something that is kind of important.
Even further update: 3,000 without power has been changed to an innumerable "thousands," and is rapidly growing/spreading north towards Newton. There's a good chance I won't have power in the morning, or that I'll lose it sometime in the overnight for a while. I do not like this prospect, and am considering turning on the electric blanket in a few minutes to make sure the bed is already nice and toasty when I get into it. On the plus side? Perhaps the university will lose power and close down, or enough people will lose power to where they'll realize hey, maybe we should've closed down last night.
My day today was spent immersed in literature; I read through the rest of Emily Dickinson's collected poems and took notes on all of the pertinent ones. I also got my Sharon Olds book in the mail (though my other Amazon shipments were delayed yet again), so I can work through that and some other stuff tomorrow as well. The bad thing is that if the school doesn't close, I have to reschedule my time with the visiting writer, which is tomorrow afternoon at 1. While I doubt she'll make it in either, and she has appointments from Thursday, Friday, and today to catch up on, I need to at least make the effort to contact her and tell her that I won't be able to get there, and see if I can reschedule for Thursday. She gave us two assignments over our time off, and I've been working on them off and on for the better part of the past hour or so. Once I email her, I'll probably give up for the night and will go to bed.
Winter Storm Rocky has hit full-force, though he's hit considerably lighter than they were predicting last night. You wouldn't be able to tell that from looking outside here in Newton, where I have almost a full foot of new snow on the ground -- I can't really tell you how much, but it's still coming down, now, at midnight, hard. The electricity has been flickering for hours on end, every ten minutes or so. There are power outages everywhere, all over Wichita and the surrounding area, and if it's not absolutely essential, it's been closed -- including every school district I can find, thousands of businesses, etc.
Except for one thing.
The university.
Literally every school district has closed. Businesses are closing. Over 1,000 homes are without power in the Wichita metro area, according to Westar's map. Every other small college and/or trade school has closed. Even private and Catholic schools have closed. The university? Still open.
This defies all logical sense.
I'm not one of those whiny brat kids who's like "everyone else is closed, why aren't we closed?" No, I'm far from that. I was born and raised in West Virginia, on top of a mountain, where snow like this was commonplace and we still went to school. And, to top that off, both for high school and college I lived 15-20 miles from school.
I also understand that three of the past four class days have been canceled by these storms -- they closed today, even though it didn't get bad down in Wichita until late this afternoon. Still, that's no excuse -- if the weather's horrible, you close. It's that simple. The safety of your faculty, staff, and students comes first and foremost, especially for a school that's known as a "commuter school," where the vast majority of its students live off-campus and/or out of town.
Update: I have just learned that the 1,000 homes without power has ballooned, in the past 30-60 minutes, to 3,000.
University's still open, folks.
It's madness.
Most of us are assuming they're waiting until morning this time -- no reason to jump the gun, so to speak, as they did today. But even with that, I think they're making a bit of a mistake. It is terrible outside. It's blizzard conditions, and is expected to keep that up until morning.
Further update: Power is out in Valley Center and Maize, on the west side of the city. Maize is where I taught this past summer -- it's not too far (maybe, oh, five or six miles west) from the city's center. Ten at most. It's spreading. It would not surprise me if I lost power here at some point tonight.
Anyway, yes, most of us who teach are assuming that we'll get up in the morning to see the university has closed, but I'm not so sure. Colleagues like Parker have long gone to bed -- he teaches at 8AM and said that if the university remains open, he'll be there (driving his Gigantor Jeep). I told him, basically, that he may as well not bother -- even if he can make it there, he has six students in his 8AM class, and the majority of them probably won't make it in. He doesn't teach again after that until the evening.
I sort of jumped the gun myself -- I knew by this afternoon for a certainty that it would be way, way too difficult to get to campus in the morning, though I waited until 10:30 tonight (to see if the University would close) before I sent out my emails to my students cancelling class. I told them that even if the university doesn't close tonight to A) be sure to watch in the morning to see if it's closed then, and B) to check to see how many of their other professors and instructors will cancel class, because I doubt I'll be the only one if the university remains open. As for their lesson plans, we're picking up where we left off, albeit shifting the schedule a week later.
Aside from that, I told them if they could afford to do so, to stay home and out of this mess of a storm we have beating us down like a red-headed stepchild.
Well, I didn't use that terminology, but you get the drift.
Speaking of drifts, they're bad. Snowdrifts, driven by a near-constant 30+mph wind, have reached two or three feet in some areas, including outside my house and garage. It's crazy. It looks like I live in the arctic. And, once more, there will be shoveling tomorrow and Wednesday if I want to be able to get out of this house on Thursday morning -- something that is kind of important.
Even further update: 3,000 without power has been changed to an innumerable "thousands," and is rapidly growing/spreading north towards Newton. There's a good chance I won't have power in the morning, or that I'll lose it sometime in the overnight for a while. I do not like this prospect, and am considering turning on the electric blanket in a few minutes to make sure the bed is already nice and toasty when I get into it. On the plus side? Perhaps the university will lose power and close down, or enough people will lose power to where they'll realize hey, maybe we should've closed down last night.
My day today was spent immersed in literature; I read through the rest of Emily Dickinson's collected poems and took notes on all of the pertinent ones. I also got my Sharon Olds book in the mail (though my other Amazon shipments were delayed yet again), so I can work through that and some other stuff tomorrow as well. The bad thing is that if the school doesn't close, I have to reschedule my time with the visiting writer, which is tomorrow afternoon at 1. While I doubt she'll make it in either, and she has appointments from Thursday, Friday, and today to catch up on, I need to at least make the effort to contact her and tell her that I won't be able to get there, and see if I can reschedule for Thursday. She gave us two assignments over our time off, and I've been working on them off and on for the better part of the past hour or so. Once I email her, I'll probably give up for the night and will go to bed.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Rocky The Destroyer
Spring semester: day twenty-five
It has begun.
When I awoke at about 10:15, nothing was happening outside. It was dark and gray, but really, nothing was going on. Not a raindrop, not a snow flurry, nothing. Friends in Wichita were starting to gloat "Oh, so this is our big winter storm that closed everything down? Really?"
I took this picture then:
The lines of snow boulders you see in my street are because the neighbor with the tractor was trying to clear off the rest of the street as much as possible before this new storm, which they're calling "Winter Storm Rocky," hit.
Less than five minutes after I took that photo -- more like three or four, probably -- the snow started. And it is everything they're saying it would be. Right now, it's near white-out conditions here in Newton, and all of the naysayers are being proved wrong -- apparently, it's just as bad, if not worse, in Wichita.
In less than an hour, my street and driveway was mostly covered again. In ninety minutes, it was completely covered. We're under a blizzard warning, even:
Usually a "blizzard warning" is a pretty bad goddamned sign. This most assuredly means that everything that's closed down now will remain closed tomorrow, and judging from what it's doing out there now, this is going to be a hell of a storm.
Most forecasts have gotten on the same page now and have been calling for anywhere between 8 and 14 inches of snow. As you can see above, the NWS is saying 8-10. Weather Channel's still saying 8-13, and many of the local news channels have accumulations falling somewhere in those lines -- some a little less, some a little more. The way the storm's tracking is, apparently, baffling to many meteorologists around the area -- one of them even described it as, and I'm paraphrasing here, a fussy, unpredictable two-year-old child. This is good, actually, for my donut bet with Parker. It's also good for my students, as I most assuredly won't be able to make it to campus tomorrow even if the university reopens -- which, honestly, I'm not expecting it to. Last week they made their announcements on that around 4PM, and I'm once more waiting for that today -- the snow is supposed to reach its heaviest/hardest roar around that time, and further into the evening.
On the plus side, two of my Amazon orders went out for delivery from Wichita this morning, before all of this started -- one UPS, one USPS. Both should get here by this afternoon, unless it gets too terrible to traverse the roads before then. I'll know when the actual mail gets here, at least; I mailed my rent check this morning, and the flag is up on the box.
Today I'm spending most of my day once more immersed in literature, trying to finish my readings of Dickinson and at least get more of a general feel for Whitman (his "collected poems" is almost 600 pages long, so I'm not going to read them all, obviously), before diving into my Norton Anthologies for some of my other reading list poets. Not much else I can do in this storm, after all, and I'd rather not waste my time playing a video game or sleeping. I have some odds-and-ends chores to do around the house as well, so it's not like I'll be bored or stir-crazy. It's been nice to have this long of a break where I haven't needed to leave the house for anything major, and as this storm will likely extend that break until Thursday, I'm taking advantage of it as much as I can while I have the time to do so.
It has begun.
When I awoke at about 10:15, nothing was happening outside. It was dark and gray, but really, nothing was going on. Not a raindrop, not a snow flurry, nothing. Friends in Wichita were starting to gloat "Oh, so this is our big winter storm that closed everything down? Really?"
I took this picture then:
The lines of snow boulders you see in my street are because the neighbor with the tractor was trying to clear off the rest of the street as much as possible before this new storm, which they're calling "Winter Storm Rocky," hit.
Less than five minutes after I took that photo -- more like three or four, probably -- the snow started. And it is everything they're saying it would be. Right now, it's near white-out conditions here in Newton, and all of the naysayers are being proved wrong -- apparently, it's just as bad, if not worse, in Wichita.
In less than an hour, my street and driveway was mostly covered again. In ninety minutes, it was completely covered. We're under a blizzard warning, even:
A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON CST TUESDAY.
* TIMING... SNOW WILL CONTINUE EARLY THIS AFTERNOON AND WILL INCREASE IN INTENSITY LATE THIS AFTERNOON INTO THE EVENING HOURS. FOR SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS THE HEAVIEST SNOW WILL OCCUR FROM LATE THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH THIS EVENING.
* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS... FROM 8 TO 10 INCHES ARE LIKELY WITH THE GREATEST ACCUMULATIONS ALONG A KINGMAN TO WICHITA TO EL DORADO LINE IN SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS. THIS WOULD INCLUDE THE WICHITA METRO AREA AND THE KANSAS TURNPIKE.
* WINDS... NORTHERLY WINDS WILL BE 30 TO 35 MPH SUSTAINED WITH 40 MPH GUSTS.
Usually a "blizzard warning" is a pretty bad goddamned sign. This most assuredly means that everything that's closed down now will remain closed tomorrow, and judging from what it's doing out there now, this is going to be a hell of a storm.
Most forecasts have gotten on the same page now and have been calling for anywhere between 8 and 14 inches of snow. As you can see above, the NWS is saying 8-10. Weather Channel's still saying 8-13, and many of the local news channels have accumulations falling somewhere in those lines -- some a little less, some a little more. The way the storm's tracking is, apparently, baffling to many meteorologists around the area -- one of them even described it as, and I'm paraphrasing here, a fussy, unpredictable two-year-old child. This is good, actually, for my donut bet with Parker. It's also good for my students, as I most assuredly won't be able to make it to campus tomorrow even if the university reopens -- which, honestly, I'm not expecting it to. Last week they made their announcements on that around 4PM, and I'm once more waiting for that today -- the snow is supposed to reach its heaviest/hardest roar around that time, and further into the evening.
On the plus side, two of my Amazon orders went out for delivery from Wichita this morning, before all of this started -- one UPS, one USPS. Both should get here by this afternoon, unless it gets too terrible to traverse the roads before then. I'll know when the actual mail gets here, at least; I mailed my rent check this morning, and the flag is up on the box.
Today I'm spending most of my day once more immersed in literature, trying to finish my readings of Dickinson and at least get more of a general feel for Whitman (his "collected poems" is almost 600 pages long, so I'm not going to read them all, obviously), before diving into my Norton Anthologies for some of my other reading list poets. Not much else I can do in this storm, after all, and I'd rather not waste my time playing a video game or sleeping. I have some odds-and-ends chores to do around the house as well, so it's not like I'll be bored or stir-crazy. It's been nice to have this long of a break where I haven't needed to leave the house for anything major, and as this storm will likely extend that break until Thursday, I'm taking advantage of it as much as I can while I have the time to do so.
Snowpocalypse, The Sequel: Part III
Here is an email I just sent to my mother; it sums up things nicely:
As I told Daisy a few minutes ago, after looking at a dizzying number of forecasts for the entire state, most of them agree on one thing: this area, including Newton and Wichita, is probably going to receive about 10 to 15 inches of snow in the span of 24 hours or so. Possibly more, possibly less, but the "10 to 15" figure is popping up on the majority of projection maps I've seen from a multitude of sources. Regardless, this puts it on par with, if not worse than, last week's storm.
After I sent this email to my mother about fifteen minutes ago, I went back to the local news channel, KAKE, to look at their list of closings. For schools alone, I counted 111 different districts/schools/colleges that have already shut down for tomorrow, including both Newton (USD 373) and Wichita (USD 259). Already. Every time I refresh the page, the list grows. As of yet, the university is not on that closings list -- I would've gotten an email from them if they had closed -- but Parker and I are both theorizing that it's only a matter of time. They've just closed all private schools in the past five minutes. We're currently trying to come up with a "friendly wager" of sorts about snowfall totals.
"I'm trying to think of something more interesting to risk than money," Parker said.
"You win, you get the blazer. You lose, [department chair] or [my officemate] gets it."
The sport coat I ordered from Amazon is ill-fitting. By "ill-fitting" I mean "cannot button it across my massive gut" and "my shoulders are too wide/arms are too long for this thing" and "Amazon clearly has a different definition of '2XL' than me." I've told Parker I'm going to bring it in to campus and let him see what he thinks; if he has a use for it and/or if he thinks it can be tailored, I'll probably just give it to him. It's a gorgeous sport coat -- it just doesn't fit me, really.
"Nah, we can do better than that. Needs more sting."
"And/or if I win you get me a sixer of Boulevard Wheat. Or something."
"Loser brings Krispy Kreme donuts next Tuesday?"
"Hmm...how many?"
"Six pack? Three for you, three for me?"
"Fair enough; I'll take that bet."
This is what Parker and I talk about in our off hours. Yes, seriously.
Parker announced that his side of the bet would be that we would get six inches or less of snow.
...what?
"Dude, that's a horrible bet," I told him. "You know I'm going to win that one."
"I say it's hype and that the storm underperforms!"
Okay; again, fair enough. Parker is an intelligent man, and if he wins the bet, I certainly don't mind getting a box of donuts on the way to campus next week.
Update: while we were discussing the terms of the bet, the university -- as well as about fifty other school districts -- closed for tomorrow. The vast majority of the state has shut down for tomorrow, even when the storm isn't going to really get going until late tomorrow afternoon (again, based on what I've seen).
"So here's the big question then," I asked Parker, "...if they're closing tomorrow, what's the likelihood they will again on Tuesday as well?"
"High. I think they're premature on tomorrow. Could've done a half day. Tuesday will be worse."
I'm inclined to agree. Could get bad before schools let out tomorrow (depending on who you believe, it's either going to start in the overnight tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow afternoon), but apparently after the last storm, nobody's taking any chances. They're calling for nastiness? Shut it down. Shut it all down.
Anyway.
Here's the latest from KSN Channel 3 in Wichita -- the only station who was, previously, calling for this to be a somewhat lighter event than last time:
So we could get anywhere between five inches...and twenty-six inches.
I really don't know how to respond to that, really, it's...interesting. That's a 21-inch swing there -- an ungodly amount of leeway for the storm to be less than 12 hours out at this point. KAKE Channel 10 is now calling for 4-10 in Wichita and my area, which is a much lower total than before, but still enough.
Basically, nobody knows what the hell is going to happen. Every local forecast, the NWS, and the Weather Channel all say something different. None of them can agree on anything, and there's no trusting anyone explicitly until all of it's actually coming down and can be measured.
It doesn't matter to me though, really -- as mentioned before, I'm not really planning to leave the house until Thursday if we get even the low end of that forecast here. With everything on the roads as-is, and with a 50-mile round trip, even if school is in session on Tuesday (and in all likelihood, it probably won't be), I can't get out in that unless everything gets cleaned up or melts fast. Very low-end of four inches? Possibly. I could possibly go to teach if the university is open. Do I want to risk it on Tuesday morning at 6:30 when I can't see well in the dark and on the roads, and when it may still be snowing like hell? Fuck no.
As mentioned above in the email to my mother, I ordered a big order of pizza this afternoon from Pizza Hut, and I have more than enough cigarettes, coffee, and other food/necessities to get me through the rest of the week. I've got books for comps ordered from Amazon, some of which will hopefully arrive tomorrow before the brunt of the storm hits, and I've got plenty of stuff to do. The car is in the garage and out of the weather, so if I get a snow-forced ten-day vacation from campus, I'm not necessarily concerned about it. I've been able to get some sleep and relaxation time for once, and I've made two different copies of my students' itinerary timelines -- one if I can't make it in on Tuesday, and one for the unlikely event that I can. Planning around snowstorms and the upcoming Spring Break (3/16 to 3/24) is crazy, and it basically cuts my instruction time for their second unit in half. Looks like I'll be cramming two days' worth of lessons into one class day several times over the next few weeks.
I heard someone mention earlier "what if the university cancels spring break because of snow days?" Yeah, I somehow doubt that will happen, ever. Students and faculty travel over that time. They leave town, they've made plans, etc. Last year, as you may remember, I flew to West Virginia over my break. Not to mention that it's the time all of us calculate our midterm grades -- students and faculty alike would get out the torches and pitchforks.
The box I mentioned in my email to my mother is the second box of my stuff left at the house in West Virginia from Christmas; while I've gotten the majority of it at this point, Mom's been looking for a box big enough to send the rest, and it's taken her a while. They've also been fighting off winter storms themselves almost every week for the past month or so, so there's never been a good time to send the rest of it. I told her to hold off because after this storm clears the area, it will (of course) move north and east, and at least part of it, or its remnants, will hit back home later this week. I do have those several Amazon shipments which have already been delayed, so there's no reason to have her send something else to me that may be delayed as well, especially if there's anything perishable in it (there usually is). That's why it's better to wait and see until this all blows through.
That's exactly what I'm going to do on the whole, really -- nobody is able to accurately predict anything even now, so I'm going to go to bed tonight as I normally would on a Sunday night, wake up in the morning, and see what's going on. I'm going to try to avoid any more prognosticating weather forecasts and/or updates from any news or other weather sources until it actually starts, which it should before I get up. I wouldn't say I get "excited," per se, but I am indeed interested in everything going on with some sort of morbid, obsessive fascination for some reason that I can't fully explain.
I did little today but eat and sit around the house -- and it felt wonderful. Yesterday, I spent many hours reading Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, two of the authors on my comps reading list, to reacquaint myself with their works. I'll be doing that a lot over the course of the next few weeks, and tomorrow as well is no exception. It appears I have nothing but extra reading and studying time on my hands, regardless of how bad the weather gets, and as Daisy so aptly put it, I should cherish it. I will be revising and adding here and there to my thesis as well, to get it ready for its final printed draft within the next three weeks or so. Who I've been reading at any time greatly inspires my work, so here's hoping that I'll have a good three or four new poems to add to it over the course of that time. I'd like to add many, many more, but it's all about what I've got time for -- and after I do get back to campus, I will be collecting students' papers and attending to much more busy-work than I had previously anticipated, so time is continually at a premium as the semester's deadlines get ever closer.
Daisy tells me not to worry too much about the comps, but she doesn't know just how important they are, or how difficult, because she's never had to take them herself. She and I had a very lengthy discussion about it last night, where I discussed with her what they actually entail and the types of questions one can expect. I told her that if I were to take the comprehensive exam right now, I'd probably do fair-to-middlin' on it, but I sincerely doubt I'd pass. I'd come close, more than likely, but I don't think I'd completely pass it. Until I'm confident that I could reasonably field most questions thrown at me by my director, I can't let my proverbial guard down, and must bury myself in reading and studying -- hence why I spent many hours yesterday in the throes of Whitman and Dickinson, and why I will do the same in the coming days and weeks with the likes of C.K. Williams, Sharon Olds, Allen Ginsberg, and most of the British and American modernists (such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats). I want to feel well-rounded, I want to get a sense of most of the authors' works and be able to discuss them and their philosophies/themes if asked. That takes, more than anything else, time and dedication. I have a little more than a month to prepare, and I'm confident that my preparations will be adequate.
Daisy herself, as mentioned in my last post, is sick with the flu. Or, at least, she thinks it's the flu -- she knows at the very least that she has a sinus infection, chills and a flushed complexion, and she feels like hell. I wish I were there in Omaha to take care of her. Through it all, though, she remains a trooper -- she applied for a few new jobs today, and I'm proud of her. Apparently PayPal, Google, and Yahoo all have big hubs in Omaha, so if I'm hard-up for anything else after graduation I can at least see what I can apply for with those companies, even though it may not necessarily be glamorous. As for Daisy, she's going to the doctor tomorrow if possible; she said she's calling them bright and early at 8AM to see if there's anything they can do for her, and she went to bed early tonight so that she could get some much-needed recuperative rest.
Also, I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but she was indeed able to get her ring resized, and they fixed the crack in the base of it as well. It is now comfortable for her to wear all the time, and she's much happier. I have made a note of her actual ring size so that when I purchase the wedding rings, I can get them without having to worry about the size being too small. I've actually found a few thus far that are really gorgeous, but haven't shown them to her yet -- that's way, way down the line at this point, and there's no reason to rush anything. I may just get them at some point and surprise her later.
On that note, folks, I head to bed. In the morning I will emerge from my slumber to see either a winter nightmare in progress or soon to occur. Regardless, I shall be here, safe and sound, in my warm home, with my warm kitties sleeping with me and my warm electric blanket turned on.
Latest estimates are saying 8-13 for Wichita; that's the NWS storm warning. Weather Channel is still saying 12-15, or at least they were this afternoon. Doesn't matter either way when it comes to that much -- I've seen tons of pictures this afternoon of store shelves stripped bare because people are hoarding groceries; no bread or milk to be found anywhere in the area, apparently. School districts are closing already, too -- there's probably fifty school districts across the state that have already shut down for tomorrow. No word on Wichita's school district or on [university], though, at least not yet. It doesn't matter anyhow; I don't have to go to campus tomorrow and if we get all that snow, open or closed, I wouldn't go in on Tuesday anyhow because there's no way I could get there. I ordered some pizza and put the car in the garage again this afternoon -- I'm holing up until I absolutely have to leave the house, and it's looking more and more like that's going to be Thursday at the earliest. The pizza guy said that the main roads here are mostly clear, but the less-traveled streets have just gotten worse due to freeze/thaw/refreeze cycles. My street is almost clear (it's dry on the sides with a huge line of thick ice/slush down the center of it), but it won't be like that for long, obviously.
The weather is just now beginning to move into the area -- it's supposed to start as ice/sleet and quickly turn over to snow around midnight or so, and last until Tuesday morning before it all pulls out. I can tell that it's moving in -- my allergies have gone from nothing this morning to nasty this evening. I am thankful I have enough food and other household necessities to where I won't have to worry about running out of anything until long after this stuff blows over.
Might want to wait on sending the box until this weather blows through both here AND there -- it'll more than likely get delayed in shipping if you send it too soon. I have a few Amazon orders for books and other stuff that have been delayed by four days or more because of last week's storm, and unless I get them tomorrow before the snow hits, they're likely to be delayed even longer.
Just read an update of the forecast -- everything's crazy. Weather stations in Topeka (2 hours north of here, the state capitol) are saying we could get 16-20 inches. West of us in Goodland, they're predicting 10-16 for us, if not a bit more. The Weather Channel is saying 6-10 for tomorrow alone, and 3-5 more tomorrow night (total: 9-15). NWS is saying 8-13. Wichita news stations are saying about the same. It could be worse than the last storm, about the same, or a bit less.
I'll let you know what happens...provided, of course, I'm able to keep power.
Love you, Mommy.
B
As I told Daisy a few minutes ago, after looking at a dizzying number of forecasts for the entire state, most of them agree on one thing: this area, including Newton and Wichita, is probably going to receive about 10 to 15 inches of snow in the span of 24 hours or so. Possibly more, possibly less, but the "10 to 15" figure is popping up on the majority of projection maps I've seen from a multitude of sources. Regardless, this puts it on par with, if not worse than, last week's storm.
After I sent this email to my mother about fifteen minutes ago, I went back to the local news channel, KAKE, to look at their list of closings. For schools alone, I counted 111 different districts/schools/colleges that have already shut down for tomorrow, including both Newton (USD 373) and Wichita (USD 259). Already. Every time I refresh the page, the list grows. As of yet, the university is not on that closings list -- I would've gotten an email from them if they had closed -- but Parker and I are both theorizing that it's only a matter of time. They've just closed all private schools in the past five minutes. We're currently trying to come up with a "friendly wager" of sorts about snowfall totals.
"I'm trying to think of something more interesting to risk than money," Parker said.
"You win, you get the blazer. You lose, [department chair] or [my officemate] gets it."
The sport coat I ordered from Amazon is ill-fitting. By "ill-fitting" I mean "cannot button it across my massive gut" and "my shoulders are too wide/arms are too long for this thing" and "Amazon clearly has a different definition of '2XL' than me." I've told Parker I'm going to bring it in to campus and let him see what he thinks; if he has a use for it and/or if he thinks it can be tailored, I'll probably just give it to him. It's a gorgeous sport coat -- it just doesn't fit me, really.
"Nah, we can do better than that. Needs more sting."
"And/or if I win you get me a sixer of Boulevard Wheat. Or something."
"Loser brings Krispy Kreme donuts next Tuesday?"
"Hmm...how many?"
"Six pack? Three for you, three for me?"
"Fair enough; I'll take that bet."
This is what Parker and I talk about in our off hours. Yes, seriously.
Parker announced that his side of the bet would be that we would get six inches or less of snow.
...what?
"Dude, that's a horrible bet," I told him. "You know I'm going to win that one."
"I say it's hype and that the storm underperforms!"
Okay; again, fair enough. Parker is an intelligent man, and if he wins the bet, I certainly don't mind getting a box of donuts on the way to campus next week.
Update: while we were discussing the terms of the bet, the university -- as well as about fifty other school districts -- closed for tomorrow. The vast majority of the state has shut down for tomorrow, even when the storm isn't going to really get going until late tomorrow afternoon (again, based on what I've seen).
"So here's the big question then," I asked Parker, "...if they're closing tomorrow, what's the likelihood they will again on Tuesday as well?"
"High. I think they're premature on tomorrow. Could've done a half day. Tuesday will be worse."
I'm inclined to agree. Could get bad before schools let out tomorrow (depending on who you believe, it's either going to start in the overnight tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow afternoon), but apparently after the last storm, nobody's taking any chances. They're calling for nastiness? Shut it down. Shut it all down.
Anyway.
Here's the latest from KSN Channel 3 in Wichita -- the only station who was, previously, calling for this to be a somewhat lighter event than last time:
Tonight: Turning mostly cloudy, windy and cold with rain changing to snow. Trace to 6” possible NW of the turnpike with the heaviest W. Lo: 28 Wind: E/NE 15-30Uhh...
Tomorrow: Snow and blowing snow. Blizzard conditions at times! Mostly cloudy, extremely windy and colder. Another 3-10” possible for 3-16” totals Around 7” in Wichita. Hi: 35 Wind: NE 25-50
Tomorrow Night: Cloudy, extremely windy and cold. Snow and blowing snow. Blizzard conditions at times! Another 2-10” for 5-26” totals. Around 14” in Wichita. Lo: 23 Wind: NE/NW 25-50
So we could get anywhere between five inches...and twenty-six inches.
I really don't know how to respond to that, really, it's...interesting. That's a 21-inch swing there -- an ungodly amount of leeway for the storm to be less than 12 hours out at this point. KAKE Channel 10 is now calling for 4-10 in Wichita and my area, which is a much lower total than before, but still enough.
Basically, nobody knows what the hell is going to happen. Every local forecast, the NWS, and the Weather Channel all say something different. None of them can agree on anything, and there's no trusting anyone explicitly until all of it's actually coming down and can be measured.
It doesn't matter to me though, really -- as mentioned before, I'm not really planning to leave the house until Thursday if we get even the low end of that forecast here. With everything on the roads as-is, and with a 50-mile round trip, even if school is in session on Tuesday (and in all likelihood, it probably won't be), I can't get out in that unless everything gets cleaned up or melts fast. Very low-end of four inches? Possibly. I could possibly go to teach if the university is open. Do I want to risk it on Tuesday morning at 6:30 when I can't see well in the dark and on the roads, and when it may still be snowing like hell? Fuck no.
As mentioned above in the email to my mother, I ordered a big order of pizza this afternoon from Pizza Hut, and I have more than enough cigarettes, coffee, and other food/necessities to get me through the rest of the week. I've got books for comps ordered from Amazon, some of which will hopefully arrive tomorrow before the brunt of the storm hits, and I've got plenty of stuff to do. The car is in the garage and out of the weather, so if I get a snow-forced ten-day vacation from campus, I'm not necessarily concerned about it. I've been able to get some sleep and relaxation time for once, and I've made two different copies of my students' itinerary timelines -- one if I can't make it in on Tuesday, and one for the unlikely event that I can. Planning around snowstorms and the upcoming Spring Break (3/16 to 3/24) is crazy, and it basically cuts my instruction time for their second unit in half. Looks like I'll be cramming two days' worth of lessons into one class day several times over the next few weeks.
I heard someone mention earlier "what if the university cancels spring break because of snow days?" Yeah, I somehow doubt that will happen, ever. Students and faculty travel over that time. They leave town, they've made plans, etc. Last year, as you may remember, I flew to West Virginia over my break. Not to mention that it's the time all of us calculate our midterm grades -- students and faculty alike would get out the torches and pitchforks.
The box I mentioned in my email to my mother is the second box of my stuff left at the house in West Virginia from Christmas; while I've gotten the majority of it at this point, Mom's been looking for a box big enough to send the rest, and it's taken her a while. They've also been fighting off winter storms themselves almost every week for the past month or so, so there's never been a good time to send the rest of it. I told her to hold off because after this storm clears the area, it will (of course) move north and east, and at least part of it, or its remnants, will hit back home later this week. I do have those several Amazon shipments which have already been delayed, so there's no reason to have her send something else to me that may be delayed as well, especially if there's anything perishable in it (there usually is). That's why it's better to wait and see until this all blows through.
That's exactly what I'm going to do on the whole, really -- nobody is able to accurately predict anything even now, so I'm going to go to bed tonight as I normally would on a Sunday night, wake up in the morning, and see what's going on. I'm going to try to avoid any more prognosticating weather forecasts and/or updates from any news or other weather sources until it actually starts, which it should before I get up. I wouldn't say I get "excited," per se, but I am indeed interested in everything going on with some sort of morbid, obsessive fascination for some reason that I can't fully explain.
I did little today but eat and sit around the house -- and it felt wonderful. Yesterday, I spent many hours reading Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, two of the authors on my comps reading list, to reacquaint myself with their works. I'll be doing that a lot over the course of the next few weeks, and tomorrow as well is no exception. It appears I have nothing but extra reading and studying time on my hands, regardless of how bad the weather gets, and as Daisy so aptly put it, I should cherish it. I will be revising and adding here and there to my thesis as well, to get it ready for its final printed draft within the next three weeks or so. Who I've been reading at any time greatly inspires my work, so here's hoping that I'll have a good three or four new poems to add to it over the course of that time. I'd like to add many, many more, but it's all about what I've got time for -- and after I do get back to campus, I will be collecting students' papers and attending to much more busy-work than I had previously anticipated, so time is continually at a premium as the semester's deadlines get ever closer.
Daisy tells me not to worry too much about the comps, but she doesn't know just how important they are, or how difficult, because she's never had to take them herself. She and I had a very lengthy discussion about it last night, where I discussed with her what they actually entail and the types of questions one can expect. I told her that if I were to take the comprehensive exam right now, I'd probably do fair-to-middlin' on it, but I sincerely doubt I'd pass. I'd come close, more than likely, but I don't think I'd completely pass it. Until I'm confident that I could reasonably field most questions thrown at me by my director, I can't let my proverbial guard down, and must bury myself in reading and studying -- hence why I spent many hours yesterday in the throes of Whitman and Dickinson, and why I will do the same in the coming days and weeks with the likes of C.K. Williams, Sharon Olds, Allen Ginsberg, and most of the British and American modernists (such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats). I want to feel well-rounded, I want to get a sense of most of the authors' works and be able to discuss them and their philosophies/themes if asked. That takes, more than anything else, time and dedication. I have a little more than a month to prepare, and I'm confident that my preparations will be adequate.
Daisy herself, as mentioned in my last post, is sick with the flu. Or, at least, she thinks it's the flu -- she knows at the very least that she has a sinus infection, chills and a flushed complexion, and she feels like hell. I wish I were there in Omaha to take care of her. Through it all, though, she remains a trooper -- she applied for a few new jobs today, and I'm proud of her. Apparently PayPal, Google, and Yahoo all have big hubs in Omaha, so if I'm hard-up for anything else after graduation I can at least see what I can apply for with those companies, even though it may not necessarily be glamorous. As for Daisy, she's going to the doctor tomorrow if possible; she said she's calling them bright and early at 8AM to see if there's anything they can do for her, and she went to bed early tonight so that she could get some much-needed recuperative rest.
Also, I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but she was indeed able to get her ring resized, and they fixed the crack in the base of it as well. It is now comfortable for her to wear all the time, and she's much happier. I have made a note of her actual ring size so that when I purchase the wedding rings, I can get them without having to worry about the size being too small. I've actually found a few thus far that are really gorgeous, but haven't shown them to her yet -- that's way, way down the line at this point, and there's no reason to rush anything. I may just get them at some point and surprise her later.
On that note, folks, I head to bed. In the morning I will emerge from my slumber to see either a winter nightmare in progress or soon to occur. Regardless, I shall be here, safe and sound, in my warm home, with my warm kitties sleeping with me and my warm electric blanket turned on.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Snowpocalypse, The Sequel: Part II
This was the prediction about six hours ago.
Scared yet?
Here's the latest one:
Okay, now I'm a bit nervous.
That little pink oval in Kansas? Yeah, that's me here in Newton, and Wichita as well.
Forecast models from KSN Channel 3 in Wichita are saying that it's possible we could get more than two more feet of snow with this storm.
I'm not kidding. Not kidding at all. I watched a twelve-minute-long storm tracking report on it earlier this evening.
The NWS says at least 10-15 more inches is probable, and in all likelihood, we'll get at least that much. It depends heavily on how the storm forms and how it tracks.
People like Daisy (and her best friend) find it amusing that I get so worked up about snowstorms, that I freak out about them (I really don't) and that I sound so excited about them. I must step back for a moment and reiterate that for those of you who don't live in this area, this never happens here. Up until this week, only two storms in the past ten years have hit the Wichita area and given it any significant, dangerous amount of snow -- the one in 2011, and one ten years ago today in 2003. Aside from the 2011 storm, it is rare that we get more than a few inches of snow at a time -- three or four at most. Most of the time if it snows we get a dusting, if that. It is fucking unheard of to get two massive snowstorms back-to-back over the span of but five days. I can't reiterate enough to you folks that this just doesn't goddamned happen here, which is why it's so fascinating to me. This is likely such a crazy meteorological phenomenon that I doubt I'll see something like it again in my lifetime unless I move to, say, Canada.
O, Canada, our home and native land...
Ahem.
As mentioned before, we're starting a betting pool of sorts within my group of friends, trying to guess when and if the university will close down again. My guess is that it will be open Monday, but closed on Tuesday -- with the further side-bet of closing early on Monday (as they did last Wednesday), but I am unsure. What I'm thinking is that unless it really is close to double the amount of snow we got before (on top of what's still out there, mind you) they won't close two days in a row again. That is unheard of. But, by the way it looks right now, close or not, I'm not getting out of this house again until what could be, possibly, Thursday. For those of you keeping track, that's five days from now.
That leaves me with a unique dilemma: do I go out again tomorrow for supplies before it hits?
The roads here are still bad. My street isn't any clearer than it was before, at least. I'm guessing the more traveled roads and streets here in Newton are mostly clear by this point, but I'd also imagine that there are many of them which are still snow-covered and terrible. It's a gamble. I haven't been out since Friday afternoon, which means things have had the chance to melt and refreeze twice in the overnights since then.
"In all seriousness, if you need any help -- a ride tomorrow to stock up -- please don't hesitate," Parker told me a few minutes ago in a message. "I can hop on 96 to 135 and be in Newton in no time."
Parker drives a massive Jeep that I have dubbed "Gigantor." He lived in Denver for a while. He knows how to navigate snow -- this is nothing new to him. This also leads me to believe that more than likely, the interstates (right now, anyway) are mostly clear, which is a good sign for the time being. Life apparently gets to return to mostly normal for a day or so before the next storm hits.
I told him that I should be good for stuff, though if I do need to get anything I'll be sure to do so early in the day before the snow moves in tomorrow evening. Regardless of whether I go anywhere or not, I'm putting the car back in the garage tomorrow before this second storm moves in. Whether we get three inches or twenty, it's not fun to clean it off the car, and there's no reason to leave it out in the weather if I'm not going to be able to go anywhere anyhow. That car's seen its share of abuse over the years -- why subject it to any more? The garage will at least keep it somewhat warmer and drier, if nothing else.
Parker is of the opinion that if we get even the lowest of low-end predictions -- six inches or so -- that the university will close again, based on how it's closed in the past (2011). It's hard to say, really; they closed down on Thursday and Friday last week, so I'm guessing they'll be hard-pressed to close down again unless we get well over a foot. Safety is important, yes, but so is money, which universities tend to lose whenever they're forced to shut down for a day or two at a time.
For now, though? All we can do is sleep. And wait.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Snowpocalypse, The Sequel: Part I
When it was all said and done, sixteen inches of snow fell on Newton. That was the official count I heard from one of the news channels out here, anyway. Other places around the area a little north/east/west of me got a little more, some a little less. In the aftermath of this, the biggest snowstorm to hit Kansas since the 1950s (or something like that; according to official records in Wichita, the airport got more than me, actually), things are slowly beginning to return to normal.
For the moment, anyhow. I'll get to that in a bit.
Yesterday morning, after getting up around 11, I realized that I was dismally low on cigarettes. Mind you, this was a mere sixteen hours or so after the snow had stopped, if that, which meant that everything was still coated in a white nightmare. I decided that I wasn't that cold, and proceeded to put on three shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of thick, thermal boot socks, my wool peacoat, hat, scarf, two pairs of gloves, annnnnnd....to top it all off...my six-pounds-each steel-toed Caterpillar boots. I decked myself out for battle. It was time...to shovel the driveway.
*dramatic music*
Ahem. Anyway.
Even though it wasn't necessary for me to shovel the driveway to walk a mile or so to the gas station to get some cigarettes, I knew that I needed to do it anyhow -- the rest of my weekend would still be spent inside reading and studying for comps and doing little else, so it would have to be done anyhow at some point if I wanted to be able to get out of the house to go teach next week -- and I didn't want to wait to do it until after it had thawed a little in the sun and re-froze into solid ice last night, as that would've made it much harder to do then.
Before I started shoveling, I went down to the garage and replenished my car with its vital fluids -- I gave her a new quart of 5w30 oil, refilled her antifreeze (she was pretty low, and hadn't given me the "low coolant" light yet, which was interesting), and put some Marvel Mystery Oil in with the quart of oil to clean some of the gunk out of her engine. Little preventative-maintenance things like that keep my car running strong. I wasn't planning to drive her anywhere until this stuff melted or was plowed off, so I figured it was better to do it now, in the garage, where it wasn't below freezing constantly.
Once I finished, I dusted off and de-cobwebbed the snow shovel (which should tell you how long it's been since I've actually needed to use it) and began shoveling the driveway. The snow was a lot lighter than I expected it to be -- very fluffy and powdery, not dense and wet -- so for the most part it was easy to move it. I had just started shoveling when I heard a loud roaring noise and looked up -- the neighbor on the farm next door had once more taken out his tractor and had decided to plow out our street. Awesome, I thought. What a class-act of a guy right there. I had maybe shoveled about half of the driveway, maybe a little more than a third, by the time he had almost effortlessly finished plowing my street -- and then he pulled the tractor into my driveway.
He looked at me, and nodded. I waved at him warmly. And he put down the shovel on his tractor, and in three smooth passes had scraped the vast majority of the snow on my driveway off to the side and into the gutters and ditches. I was...well, stunned. He'd done this once before, years ago -- back when my longtime ex was still living here -- but I wasn't really expecting it this time. I made many "thank you" motions with my hands, and he smiled and pulled back out to finish plowing the end of the street.
Apparently, the snow-plow fairy does exist.
Over the course of the next few days, I'm going to write him a very nice thank-you letter and stick it in his mailbox at the end of the street. Words can't really express how much I appreciated his help.
So, I was left standing in my now mostly-cleared driveway, looking at my now somewhat-cleared street. Hm, I thought. I have a car that's just been replenished with fluids, and I've driven on worse snow than this...
I cleaned off the rest of the driveway in the spots where it needed to be cleared, and was about to put my shovel away when my other neighbor came out to clean off the area around his car. Said neighbor works at Walmart -- all of his family does, actually; he, his wife, and his son.
"You guys been to work since all of this hit?" I asked.
His car is older than mine by several years, but it's in better condition for the most part -- it's a big Buick Park Avenue, and those things will run forever.
"Yeah, [wife] is there right now, and I worked last night," he replied.
"What are the roads like between here and there?"
"Shitty," he said. "Main roads are pretty much fine, but all of the side streets haven't had anything done to them at all. They're a mess. You have to go out?"
"Eh, it's either now or later," I said. "Neighbor saw me shoveling and plowed out the rest of the driveway for me, so now's as good a time as any."
"I'm going to try to move my car into the garage; maybe he'll plow out our side too. But yeah, you should be okay with that big car of yours. It looks worse than it is."
This was not true at all.
I got into the Monte Carlo and gingerly backed her out of the drive. This was fine. She was running strong, warm, from being in the garage. Before I'd backed out, my helpful snow-plow-fairy had taken the tractor up the street to see what else he could plow, so I had a clear shot off my street. I breathed deeply and eased the car into motion.
There's something people don't tell you about driving in snow when your car is a landboat and has a low center of gravity -- you can drive straight just fine, but when you get to a corner and have to turn? Have fun, because that's not pleasant at all.
The streets surrounding my house hadn't been treated or plowed at all -- these are residential neighborhoods, and plows and road crews don't do them. However, they had been driven on quite a bit, so they were passable, but barely. Turning was a nightmare. The Monte Carlo almost went into a ditch or snowbank several times. I learned that you need to use momentum when driving in snow; don't stop if you can possibly avoid it, or you'll probably get stuck or otherwise unable to correct your steering no matter how hard you try. I got to 14th Street -- one of Newton's most heavily-traveled roads aside from Main -- and it was godawful. It also took me about ten minutes to get there.
My driving skills are strong, even in snow -- I know where my car is and what it can and will do. I know its strengths and weaknesses. I know its size and turning radius. These skills are the only things that saved me from going into the ditch or a snowbank. I can anticipate traction and response times from the gas pedal to the wheels, or from the brake to the wheels. So, by the time I got up to the end of 14th Street, where the gas station is, I knew I could safely make it to Walmart. I turned onto Main only to find....clear streets. Just wet. Plows had taken care of everything there. Getting to Walmart was not a problem.
While the parking lot was a mess, I got inside and did what I like to call "essentials shopping." This means, really, that I got cat food, cigarettes, and a few other small things I needed around the house that I could eat without really needing to cook a whole lot, but would be enough to make me figuratively limp through the next week or so without worries about running out of things. I got back in the car and came home -- very slowly and carefully, again, slip-sliding here and there. When I pulled into my driveway, I parked the car and swore that I wouldn't go out again until everything was much clearer and easier to traverse -- while I could get to Walmart and back, it wasn't without a lot of difficulty, and there's no way I could get to campus and back without possibly wrecking my mighty Monte Carlo. She didn't like the snow that much, and I don't blame her -- there's just too much of it. If we'd gotten half of what we did, it would still be too much. I can drive her normally in 4-5" or so, but anything more than that is a nightmare.
In the interim, this is what it looks like outside now:
As you can see, my driveway actually has some clear, dry spots for the moment. I could get in and out if I wanted to. You can also see where our street has been plowed out by our magical snow-plow fairy tractor-man. Our street is still a huge sheet of ice and snow, but believe me, that's better than the other roads around me (with the exception of Main Street). I'm confident I could get out if necessary, but once I hit the end of my street, anything goes (again).
Once I got home, I was able to do some somewhat productive stuff around the house -- I baked some rolls with the remainder of dough Daisy's mom made us for pizza crust last weekend, I did all of the laundry and dishes, and I spent a long time talking to Daisy herself before bed.
However, we're not out of the woods yet.
I awoke to this alert this morning:
You're kidding me, right?
The turnpike, for those of you unaware, is just south of the city of Wichita. To get to it, you drive south on I-135 until you're basically past the city, then hop on it. This means that here in Newton and all of Wichita will get the worst of this new storm when it begins to roll through tomorrow night. Sonofabitch I hate winter!
When I read that, I was very glad that I'd gone out yesterday to get what I needed. While I don't go to campus on Monday, I normally do have to go in on Tuesday -- as you probably know, it's the longest day of my week and the day where I have all of my office hours, writing center hour, I teach, and now I have my visiting writer meetings on Tuesday afternoons.
My friends and I are thinking of starting a betting pool on whether or not the university will close down again. With the snow and ice already on the ground and the roads, it's not going to take much to completely fuck travel and commutes again in and around the city -- especially if the snow is really heavy for most of Monday. It also means that even if the university doesn't close, based on how bad the roads are up here in Newton already, that I know I won't be able to make it to campus on Tuesday if this storm hits as strongly as they say it will. I sent an email to my students telling them that, for now, to hold steady -- we don't yet know what's going to happen, but as of right now assume that this week's classes will go on as scheduled. That's all I can do, really, until I see what the weather is like on Monday during the day.
Yep. I swear, it feels like I'm living on top of the mountain in West Virginia all over again. It is not a welcome feeling.
"The heavens are giving you time to study," Daisy told me this morning. "Cherish it."
She's right; the rest of my weekend (however long that "weekend" may end up being when it's all said and done) will be spent poring over Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, and probably some John Keats if I have the time. I have ordered several more books from Amazon -- a Sharon Olds collection, a C.K. Williams collection, and a few others -- to focus on for the rest of the month, but with this storm those shipments may be delayed just like the other ones have been as of late (of four Amazon orders I've made in the past week or so, I've only received one as of yet -- the sport coat, which doesn't fit that well). It'll be a bit of relaxation time, to be sure, but all of the shitty weather is seriously messing with my teaching schedule and my ability to give my students the time they need for their second and third units of my class.
I'll have to wait to see what happens, I suppose. But until then, I'm taking Daisy's advice -- I'm curling up downstairs with a book and the electric blanket as much as I can, and when I'm not doing that, I'm burying my nose in PDFs of authors on my reading list.
For the moment, anyhow. I'll get to that in a bit.
Yesterday morning, after getting up around 11, I realized that I was dismally low on cigarettes. Mind you, this was a mere sixteen hours or so after the snow had stopped, if that, which meant that everything was still coated in a white nightmare. I decided that I wasn't that cold, and proceeded to put on three shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of thick, thermal boot socks, my wool peacoat, hat, scarf, two pairs of gloves, annnnnnd....to top it all off...my six-pounds-each steel-toed Caterpillar boots. I decked myself out for battle. It was time...to shovel the driveway.
*dramatic music*
Ahem. Anyway.
Even though it wasn't necessary for me to shovel the driveway to walk a mile or so to the gas station to get some cigarettes, I knew that I needed to do it anyhow -- the rest of my weekend would still be spent inside reading and studying for comps and doing little else, so it would have to be done anyhow at some point if I wanted to be able to get out of the house to go teach next week -- and I didn't want to wait to do it until after it had thawed a little in the sun and re-froze into solid ice last night, as that would've made it much harder to do then.
Before I started shoveling, I went down to the garage and replenished my car with its vital fluids -- I gave her a new quart of 5w30 oil, refilled her antifreeze (she was pretty low, and hadn't given me the "low coolant" light yet, which was interesting), and put some Marvel Mystery Oil in with the quart of oil to clean some of the gunk out of her engine. Little preventative-maintenance things like that keep my car running strong. I wasn't planning to drive her anywhere until this stuff melted or was plowed off, so I figured it was better to do it now, in the garage, where it wasn't below freezing constantly.
Once I finished, I dusted off and de-cobwebbed the snow shovel (which should tell you how long it's been since I've actually needed to use it) and began shoveling the driveway. The snow was a lot lighter than I expected it to be -- very fluffy and powdery, not dense and wet -- so for the most part it was easy to move it. I had just started shoveling when I heard a loud roaring noise and looked up -- the neighbor on the farm next door had once more taken out his tractor and had decided to plow out our street. Awesome, I thought. What a class-act of a guy right there. I had maybe shoveled about half of the driveway, maybe a little more than a third, by the time he had almost effortlessly finished plowing my street -- and then he pulled the tractor into my driveway.
He looked at me, and nodded. I waved at him warmly. And he put down the shovel on his tractor, and in three smooth passes had scraped the vast majority of the snow on my driveway off to the side and into the gutters and ditches. I was...well, stunned. He'd done this once before, years ago -- back when my longtime ex was still living here -- but I wasn't really expecting it this time. I made many "thank you" motions with my hands, and he smiled and pulled back out to finish plowing the end of the street.
Apparently, the snow-plow fairy does exist.
Over the course of the next few days, I'm going to write him a very nice thank-you letter and stick it in his mailbox at the end of the street. Words can't really express how much I appreciated his help.
So, I was left standing in my now mostly-cleared driveway, looking at my now somewhat-cleared street. Hm, I thought. I have a car that's just been replenished with fluids, and I've driven on worse snow than this...
I cleaned off the rest of the driveway in the spots where it needed to be cleared, and was about to put my shovel away when my other neighbor came out to clean off the area around his car. Said neighbor works at Walmart -- all of his family does, actually; he, his wife, and his son.
"You guys been to work since all of this hit?" I asked.
His car is older than mine by several years, but it's in better condition for the most part -- it's a big Buick Park Avenue, and those things will run forever.
"Yeah, [wife] is there right now, and I worked last night," he replied.
"What are the roads like between here and there?"
"Shitty," he said. "Main roads are pretty much fine, but all of the side streets haven't had anything done to them at all. They're a mess. You have to go out?"
"Eh, it's either now or later," I said. "Neighbor saw me shoveling and plowed out the rest of the driveway for me, so now's as good a time as any."
"I'm going to try to move my car into the garage; maybe he'll plow out our side too. But yeah, you should be okay with that big car of yours. It looks worse than it is."
This was not true at all.
I got into the Monte Carlo and gingerly backed her out of the drive. This was fine. She was running strong, warm, from being in the garage. Before I'd backed out, my helpful snow-plow-fairy had taken the tractor up the street to see what else he could plow, so I had a clear shot off my street. I breathed deeply and eased the car into motion.
There's something people don't tell you about driving in snow when your car is a landboat and has a low center of gravity -- you can drive straight just fine, but when you get to a corner and have to turn? Have fun, because that's not pleasant at all.
The streets surrounding my house hadn't been treated or plowed at all -- these are residential neighborhoods, and plows and road crews don't do them. However, they had been driven on quite a bit, so they were passable, but barely. Turning was a nightmare. The Monte Carlo almost went into a ditch or snowbank several times. I learned that you need to use momentum when driving in snow; don't stop if you can possibly avoid it, or you'll probably get stuck or otherwise unable to correct your steering no matter how hard you try. I got to 14th Street -- one of Newton's most heavily-traveled roads aside from Main -- and it was godawful. It also took me about ten minutes to get there.
My driving skills are strong, even in snow -- I know where my car is and what it can and will do. I know its strengths and weaknesses. I know its size and turning radius. These skills are the only things that saved me from going into the ditch or a snowbank. I can anticipate traction and response times from the gas pedal to the wheels, or from the brake to the wheels. So, by the time I got up to the end of 14th Street, where the gas station is, I knew I could safely make it to Walmart. I turned onto Main only to find....clear streets. Just wet. Plows had taken care of everything there. Getting to Walmart was not a problem.
While the parking lot was a mess, I got inside and did what I like to call "essentials shopping." This means, really, that I got cat food, cigarettes, and a few other small things I needed around the house that I could eat without really needing to cook a whole lot, but would be enough to make me figuratively limp through the next week or so without worries about running out of things. I got back in the car and came home -- very slowly and carefully, again, slip-sliding here and there. When I pulled into my driveway, I parked the car and swore that I wouldn't go out again until everything was much clearer and easier to traverse -- while I could get to Walmart and back, it wasn't without a lot of difficulty, and there's no way I could get to campus and back without possibly wrecking my mighty Monte Carlo. She didn't like the snow that much, and I don't blame her -- there's just too much of it. If we'd gotten half of what we did, it would still be too much. I can drive her normally in 4-5" or so, but anything more than that is a nightmare.
In the interim, this is what it looks like outside now:
Once I got home, I was able to do some somewhat productive stuff around the house -- I baked some rolls with the remainder of dough Daisy's mom made us for pizza crust last weekend, I did all of the laundry and dishes, and I spent a long time talking to Daisy herself before bed.
However, we're not out of the woods yet.
I awoke to this alert this morning:
... WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM SUNDAY EVENING THROUGH LATE MONDAY NIGHT...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WICHITA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH... WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM SUNDAY EVENING THROUGH LATE MONDAY NIGHT.
* TIMING... SNOWFALL WILL BEGIN SUNDAY EVENING AND PERSIST UNTIL MONDAY NIGHT. THE PERIOD OF THE HEAVIEST SNOW WILL BE VERY EARLY MONDAY MORNING THROUGH MONDAY AFTERNOON.
* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS... THE HEAVIEST ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 TO 12 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE MAINLY NORTH AND WEST OF THE KANSAS TURNPIKE THROUGH CENTRAL AND SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS. 3 TO 6 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE SOUTH OF THE TURNPIKE.
You're kidding me, right?
The turnpike, for those of you unaware, is just south of the city of Wichita. To get to it, you drive south on I-135 until you're basically past the city, then hop on it. This means that here in Newton and all of Wichita will get the worst of this new storm when it begins to roll through tomorrow night. Sonofabitch I hate winter!
When I read that, I was very glad that I'd gone out yesterday to get what I needed. While I don't go to campus on Monday, I normally do have to go in on Tuesday -- as you probably know, it's the longest day of my week and the day where I have all of my office hours, writing center hour, I teach, and now I have my visiting writer meetings on Tuesday afternoons.
My friends and I are thinking of starting a betting pool on whether or not the university will close down again. With the snow and ice already on the ground and the roads, it's not going to take much to completely fuck travel and commutes again in and around the city -- especially if the snow is really heavy for most of Monday. It also means that even if the university doesn't close, based on how bad the roads are up here in Newton already, that I know I won't be able to make it to campus on Tuesday if this storm hits as strongly as they say it will. I sent an email to my students telling them that, for now, to hold steady -- we don't yet know what's going to happen, but as of right now assume that this week's classes will go on as scheduled. That's all I can do, really, until I see what the weather is like on Monday during the day.
* IMPACTS... THE STRONG WINDS COMBINED WITH MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW WILL CAUSE ROADS TO BE SNOWPACKED WITH BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW AND WILL REDUCE VISIBILITIES. AT TIMES VISIBILITIES COULD BE REDUCED TO A QUARTER MILE. THIS WILL CAUSE TRAVEL TO BE DANGEROUS... AND IS DISCOURAGED.
Yep. I swear, it feels like I'm living on top of the mountain in West Virginia all over again. It is not a welcome feeling.
"The heavens are giving you time to study," Daisy told me this morning. "Cherish it."
She's right; the rest of my weekend (however long that "weekend" may end up being when it's all said and done) will be spent poring over Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, and probably some John Keats if I have the time. I have ordered several more books from Amazon -- a Sharon Olds collection, a C.K. Williams collection, and a few others -- to focus on for the rest of the month, but with this storm those shipments may be delayed just like the other ones have been as of late (of four Amazon orders I've made in the past week or so, I've only received one as of yet -- the sport coat, which doesn't fit that well). It'll be a bit of relaxation time, to be sure, but all of the shitty weather is seriously messing with my teaching schedule and my ability to give my students the time they need for their second and third units of my class.
I'll have to wait to see what happens, I suppose. But until then, I'm taking Daisy's advice -- I'm curling up downstairs with a book and the electric blanket as much as I can, and when I'm not doing that, I'm burying my nose in PDFs of authors on my reading list.
Friday, February 22, 2013
S'now Comfort
Spring semester: day twenty-four
The snow has stopped, but not before closing everything down in the area (again) for today -- the local pizza places aren't even open, and the mail never came down the street yesterday (that I saw, anyway). The university closed down for today, again, before 4PM yesterday, and the storm has now moved off to the north and east, leaving a bunch of cabin-fever-stricken Kansans in its wake.
Me, I'm fine; I don't like leaving the house any more than I have to anyway. I have realized, however, that like it or not, I'll have to make a nice little jog to the gas station for cigarettes if I want to be able to concentrate on anything over the weekend. I have enough left to get me through the evening or so, but they're running out faster than I expected them to. This is probably because I've been sleeping weird hours and have been awake a lot more than I normally am when I'm off (which, yes, is really weird). In a pinch, I also have my electronic cigarette, but it's definitely not the same in comparison -- my last disposable one is in my desk at work, and I'm using my old cartridge-based one right now, which always makes me cough and irritates my throat if I use it too much.
I have come to the conclusion that I have to dig out whether I want to or not; the snow isn't going to melt off for at least another week or so, and there's just so much of it. It's not like I have a plow or snowblower or anything like that, so I have strapped on my eight-pound, steel-toed Caterpillar boots, am wearing three layers on top and two below the waist, two pairs of thick thermal socks, and soon I will be shoveling my driveway out. More snow is moving in on Sunday and Monday, as mentioned before, which means that this next week is likely to suck, again, for any sort of travel -- even a shopping trip. If I have to, with a little elbow grease I'll be able to get my landboat of a car out and about to get some necessities, but I don't foresee that happening any time before absolutely necessary unless my neighbor on the farm next door uses his tractor to plow the street again (which he did the last time it snowed like this two years ago; awesome guy, he is).
Last night, I showered and trimmed my beard -- the only trim it's had for the past five months -- and once I'm done with the driveway (or at least passably done) I'm going to put away my laundry and take care of some other household chores before I settle in for a weekend of reading and studying. I have to order some books from Amazon, but there's no point in doing that until the weather clears up enough out here for them to actually start shipping things again.
Daisy, off and on, thinks she's getting sick again -- she's had an intermittent sore throat for the past several days, along with a general feeling of nausea and fatigue. Last night, she was feeling a bit better, but still. I feel bad for her; her immune system isn't great. This would be the fourth or fifth time she's been ill on some level since the two of us have been together, and she's miserable when she's sick (she's the kind of person who stares at me with puppy-dog eyes and repeats, over and over, "I'm dyyyying.") I keep telling her that she needs to get on a vitamin regimen and stick to it, even though she hates taking pills. I still think, to this day, that me taking vitamins all the time is what keeps me from getting sick -- keep in mind that every day I'm on campus, I'm not only in close teaching quarters with 50 students, but in and around the department with all of the other professors and GTAs who have a ton of students, as well. I don't get sick often at all. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been really ill over the course of the past four or five years. With Daisy, I'm as supportive and helpful as I can be when she's sick, and when she's sick and at home, there's not a whole lot I can do other than let her rest.
Despite the fact that I'm enjoying my time off, I've become a little restless, actually. I wouldn't call it "cabin fever" per se, but I am becoming bored with what I have to do around the house. This is a problem because once I become restless, nothing will alleviate my boredom or disgruntlement. I don't want to watch a movie or play a video game, there's not a whole lot to clean or cook, and I know that if I try to start reading or studying for comps, I'll not absorb anything -- it'll all bore me even more. Instead, in order to try to change my demeanor a bit, last night I took a notebook and a pen out to the living room and started writing. What I ended up with were very rough drafts of four new poems, including one written about (and for) Daisy. It's the first time I've been able to write anything new, anything of substance, in weeks. I envy those poets who can sit down with a notebook and a pen for four hours a day, coming up with new things to write about, because I've never been able to do that. I'm not that kind of poet (or that kind of writer in general). Most of the stuff I write, nobody wants or cares enough to read -- hence why it's all done here in the blog.
The only other thing that seems to somewhat stall out my restlessness or boredom is keeping my earbuds in my ears playing my podcasts as much as possible. It takes my mind off of everything else if I can focus on one little thing while I'm taking care of work or chores. I can't do it while I'm working on school stuff, obviously, but if I'm doing laundry or cleaning, it sort of dulls the monotony. Staying warm helps, too -- after the snow went through, the temperature has dropped like a stone, with means my furnace has been running overtime. It's getting down into the low single digits over the course of the next few nights here, which isn't exactly the best sort of weather for all of this stuff melting off, as you may have guessed. It's going to be really cold while I'm shoveling off the driveway in a bit, that's for damned sure.
The snow has stopped, but not before closing everything down in the area (again) for today -- the local pizza places aren't even open, and the mail never came down the street yesterday (that I saw, anyway). The university closed down for today, again, before 4PM yesterday, and the storm has now moved off to the north and east, leaving a bunch of cabin-fever-stricken Kansans in its wake.
Me, I'm fine; I don't like leaving the house any more than I have to anyway. I have realized, however, that like it or not, I'll have to make a nice little jog to the gas station for cigarettes if I want to be able to concentrate on anything over the weekend. I have enough left to get me through the evening or so, but they're running out faster than I expected them to. This is probably because I've been sleeping weird hours and have been awake a lot more than I normally am when I'm off (which, yes, is really weird). In a pinch, I also have my electronic cigarette, but it's definitely not the same in comparison -- my last disposable one is in my desk at work, and I'm using my old cartridge-based one right now, which always makes me cough and irritates my throat if I use it too much.
I have come to the conclusion that I have to dig out whether I want to or not; the snow isn't going to melt off for at least another week or so, and there's just so much of it. It's not like I have a plow or snowblower or anything like that, so I have strapped on my eight-pound, steel-toed Caterpillar boots, am wearing three layers on top and two below the waist, two pairs of thick thermal socks, and soon I will be shoveling my driveway out. More snow is moving in on Sunday and Monday, as mentioned before, which means that this next week is likely to suck, again, for any sort of travel -- even a shopping trip. If I have to, with a little elbow grease I'll be able to get my landboat of a car out and about to get some necessities, but I don't foresee that happening any time before absolutely necessary unless my neighbor on the farm next door uses his tractor to plow the street again (which he did the last time it snowed like this two years ago; awesome guy, he is).
Last night, I showered and trimmed my beard -- the only trim it's had for the past five months -- and once I'm done with the driveway (or at least passably done) I'm going to put away my laundry and take care of some other household chores before I settle in for a weekend of reading and studying. I have to order some books from Amazon, but there's no point in doing that until the weather clears up enough out here for them to actually start shipping things again.
Daisy, off and on, thinks she's getting sick again -- she's had an intermittent sore throat for the past several days, along with a general feeling of nausea and fatigue. Last night, she was feeling a bit better, but still. I feel bad for her; her immune system isn't great. This would be the fourth or fifth time she's been ill on some level since the two of us have been together, and she's miserable when she's sick (she's the kind of person who stares at me with puppy-dog eyes and repeats, over and over, "I'm dyyyying.") I keep telling her that she needs to get on a vitamin regimen and stick to it, even though she hates taking pills. I still think, to this day, that me taking vitamins all the time is what keeps me from getting sick -- keep in mind that every day I'm on campus, I'm not only in close teaching quarters with 50 students, but in and around the department with all of the other professors and GTAs who have a ton of students, as well. I don't get sick often at all. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been really ill over the course of the past four or five years. With Daisy, I'm as supportive and helpful as I can be when she's sick, and when she's sick and at home, there's not a whole lot I can do other than let her rest.
Despite the fact that I'm enjoying my time off, I've become a little restless, actually. I wouldn't call it "cabin fever" per se, but I am becoming bored with what I have to do around the house. This is a problem because once I become restless, nothing will alleviate my boredom or disgruntlement. I don't want to watch a movie or play a video game, there's not a whole lot to clean or cook, and I know that if I try to start reading or studying for comps, I'll not absorb anything -- it'll all bore me even more. Instead, in order to try to change my demeanor a bit, last night I took a notebook and a pen out to the living room and started writing. What I ended up with were very rough drafts of four new poems, including one written about (and for) Daisy. It's the first time I've been able to write anything new, anything of substance, in weeks. I envy those poets who can sit down with a notebook and a pen for four hours a day, coming up with new things to write about, because I've never been able to do that. I'm not that kind of poet (or that kind of writer in general). Most of the stuff I write, nobody wants or cares enough to read -- hence why it's all done here in the blog.
The only other thing that seems to somewhat stall out my restlessness or boredom is keeping my earbuds in my ears playing my podcasts as much as possible. It takes my mind off of everything else if I can focus on one little thing while I'm taking care of work or chores. I can't do it while I'm working on school stuff, obviously, but if I'm doing laundry or cleaning, it sort of dulls the monotony. Staying warm helps, too -- after the snow went through, the temperature has dropped like a stone, with means my furnace has been running overtime. It's getting down into the low single digits over the course of the next few nights here, which isn't exactly the best sort of weather for all of this stuff melting off, as you may have guessed. It's going to be really cold while I'm shoveling off the driveway in a bit, that's for damned sure.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
COME AT ME, SNOW: Part II
Spring semester: day twenty-three
Around 8PM last night, possibly a little earlier, the university closed down for today. Completely. They were wasting no time. This was interesting to me, because at that point in time we were sort of in the lull between waves. Everything that had moved through yesterday had gone, and we weren't getting anything but some flurries around the area and the occasional squall. I talked to Parker for a bit on Facebook and Twitter around 10:30 or so, and nothing else had moved into the area down there yet either.
By around 11 or so, it began snowing consistently here in Newton. At first it was light, blowing, flurry-like activity, and then quickly picked up -- as I was talking to Daisy, it became a mostly silent, crazy blizzard once more with white-out conditions. Yet, it once more tapered off for a while, and by the time I went to bed around 1:30, we'd maybe picked up an inch of additional accumulation, if that. My footprints down the driveway to check the mail yesterday afternoon were still easily visible, and the cars across the street were once more covered, but lightly.
"Well," I told the cats as I went to bed (because, yes, I talk to them), "If it's coming, it's taking its time, but I don't care since they've already closed campus tomorrow and I canceled my classes before that. Looks like I get to stay warm and comfy with you little shits."
In response, Pete lovingly headbutted me in the face and laid down under the covers next to me like a teddy bear, and I went to sleep.
I awoke a little after 9AM. The snow outside lit up the room from the window like sunlight enough to the point where, for a few moments, I actually thought it was sunlight and that the storm had completely blown over. Again, it didn't matter to me either way, since campus had already been closed and I didn't have to go anywhere. I got up and trudged over to the big window at the front of my bedroom, lifted the curtain back, and looked outside.
Holy hell.
It had not "blown over," by any stretch of the imagination -- but for the time, it had stopped snowing. In the hours I was asleep, close to a foot of snow had fallen. The road was undisturbed; nobody in my neighborhood had attempted to get out, and there was a good 14" or so on the ground, give or take. I couldn't get a great view of all of it from the ground level, so I got dressed and came upstairs so that I could look at it more easily out of the front picture window in the living room:
My mailbox, in the center of the picture, is about three feet off the street level, if not a bit more -- it comes up to my mid-torso when I'm standing on the street. This leads me to believe that, without going outside to measure it myself, there's about 14-16" of snow on the ground at my house. The neighbors' mailbox across the street isn't buried so deeply because it's positioned different at the end of their driveway. Mine's sunk into the grass at the end of my yard.
I haven't had the television on at all, but I've been reading Facebook, and by all accounts it's just as bad in Wichita. People are getting into car accidents, and when ambulances are dispatched to help them, the ambulances have gotten stuck. Nearly everything's closed, save for gas stations, some grocery stores, and Walmart. Friends in the Kansas City area (four hours northeast of here) have been posting pictures on Twitter of multiple-car, nasty accidents on the interstates, enough to where some of the said interstates have shut down. CNN posted a video filmed on the campus of the university here, right next to my building, of thunder and lightning with the blizzard-like snow as it fell last night. Yeah, CNN reporters were at my school to film the craziness. Yeah, basically, it's nuts out there from everything I've read and heard from friends and colleagues.
Mind you, this is for a little more than a foot of snow. When this happens back home in West Virginia, yeah, it sucks, but for the most part life carries on as normal.
And again, I'll remind you that it was over seventy degrees here four days ago.
I'm sure there's already a betting pool on whether or not the university will close down again tomorrow -- many school districts out here closed down for tomorrow before noon today. Apparently it's not supposed to stop snowing in most areas until much later this evening, though it's not doing anything here right now (it was earlier, for a bit). Here's the latest NWS update:
This is a bit confusing to me, really; I'm not exactly sure what they're saying -- are we supposed to get that much more, or will that be the final total? It's difficult to understand, and they keep updating things every six hours or so. While I'm pretty sure I'm not going to end up with three feet of snow on the ground here in Newton, it's still confusing, and basically means that I don't know how much more is coming between now and when it's all over. The Weather Channel says "expect occasional snow to begin at 4:45 PM," which is a little less than three hours from now.
It's not going to be "all over" for several more days, actually; the temperature tomorrow night is supposed to drop into the single digits, and it's not going to get above the freezing point for a high until the weekend...before we get another system bringing more rain and snow on Monday. They're not giving predictions for that one yet -- too busy taking care of the headaches that this storm caused/is causing, I'm sure. All of this moves into my parents' area back home over the course of the next 24 hours as well, and right now what hit here last night is currently hitting Daisy up in Omaha. It's bad enough to where I have two Amazon shipments (one's my sport coat, and I have a second one coming as well) that have been delayed, and that almost never happens.
Of course, if the university closes down again tomorrow, it means nothing to us in the English department -- we neither teach nor hold classes on Fridays. Even if we did, it would matter little, as most of us wouldn't be able to dig out anyhow even if the university remains open. I'm not planning on leaving the house until at least Sunday. The only thing I may need between now and the end of the weekend would be more cigarettes, and if I have to I'll strap on the steel-toed Caterpillar boots I have in the closet and walk the mile or so to the gas station for them. Trying to get the Monte Carlo out and about would be a driveway-shoveling, slip-sliding nightmare right now, and not worth the time or energy when I could get some exercise and walk to the gas station much more easily if necessary. For now, though, I don't have to worry about anything -- I'm staying indoors with my warm kitties and am planning to have a huge bowl of hot, vegan dumpling soup for dinner.
My mother checked in with me earlier to make sure I was still okay, and commented that the snow pictures (I sent them to her) made it look like I was still living in West Virginia. Yep. It's pretty similar to a standard WV snowstorm. People out here just freak out about it a lot more.
I do have stuff to do over the next five days that I'll be at home; I really should do my taxes, I need to pay the rent (once I can wade my way through the snow out to the mailbox), I have to revise my lesson plans to reflect the snow day today, and I need to work on my comps and thesis stuff as much as possible -- in addition to the normal household chores. I'll also have to keep my eye on the weather as the weekend ends -- it'll suck even harder for my students if we do get another storm on Monday and I'm unable to come in on Tuesday morning, but it'll keep them from being on a lopsided schedule for the next week or so. And, eventually, I would imagine I'll have to at least attempt to shovel or clean off the driveway somehow if I want to leave the house at all within the next week. I don't have a high-riding SUV like my parents or some friends do.
On that note, I'm going to get something to eat and get a shower -- I'm sincerely enjoying having a fair amount of downtime, for once.
Around 8PM last night, possibly a little earlier, the university closed down for today. Completely. They were wasting no time. This was interesting to me, because at that point in time we were sort of in the lull between waves. Everything that had moved through yesterday had gone, and we weren't getting anything but some flurries around the area and the occasional squall. I talked to Parker for a bit on Facebook and Twitter around 10:30 or so, and nothing else had moved into the area down there yet either.
By around 11 or so, it began snowing consistently here in Newton. At first it was light, blowing, flurry-like activity, and then quickly picked up -- as I was talking to Daisy, it became a mostly silent, crazy blizzard once more with white-out conditions. Yet, it once more tapered off for a while, and by the time I went to bed around 1:30, we'd maybe picked up an inch of additional accumulation, if that. My footprints down the driveway to check the mail yesterday afternoon were still easily visible, and the cars across the street were once more covered, but lightly.
"Well," I told the cats as I went to bed (because, yes, I talk to them), "If it's coming, it's taking its time, but I don't care since they've already closed campus tomorrow and I canceled my classes before that. Looks like I get to stay warm and comfy with you little shits."
In response, Pete lovingly headbutted me in the face and laid down under the covers next to me like a teddy bear, and I went to sleep.
I awoke a little after 9AM. The snow outside lit up the room from the window like sunlight enough to the point where, for a few moments, I actually thought it was sunlight and that the storm had completely blown over. Again, it didn't matter to me either way, since campus had already been closed and I didn't have to go anywhere. I got up and trudged over to the big window at the front of my bedroom, lifted the curtain back, and looked outside.
Holy hell.
It had not "blown over," by any stretch of the imagination -- but for the time, it had stopped snowing. In the hours I was asleep, close to a foot of snow had fallen. The road was undisturbed; nobody in my neighborhood had attempted to get out, and there was a good 14" or so on the ground, give or take. I couldn't get a great view of all of it from the ground level, so I got dressed and came upstairs so that I could look at it more easily out of the front picture window in the living room:
My mailbox, in the center of the picture, is about three feet off the street level, if not a bit more -- it comes up to my mid-torso when I'm standing on the street. This leads me to believe that, without going outside to measure it myself, there's about 14-16" of snow on the ground at my house. The neighbors' mailbox across the street isn't buried so deeply because it's positioned different at the end of their driveway. Mine's sunk into the grass at the end of my yard.
I haven't had the television on at all, but I've been reading Facebook, and by all accounts it's just as bad in Wichita. People are getting into car accidents, and when ambulances are dispatched to help them, the ambulances have gotten stuck. Nearly everything's closed, save for gas stations, some grocery stores, and Walmart. Friends in the Kansas City area (four hours northeast of here) have been posting pictures on Twitter of multiple-car, nasty accidents on the interstates, enough to where some of the said interstates have shut down. CNN posted a video filmed on the campus of the university here, right next to my building, of thunder and lightning with the blizzard-like snow as it fell last night. Yeah, CNN reporters were at my school to film the craziness. Yeah, basically, it's nuts out there from everything I've read and heard from friends and colleagues.
Mind you, this is for a little more than a foot of snow. When this happens back home in West Virginia, yeah, it sucks, but for the most part life carries on as normal.
And again, I'll remind you that it was over seventy degrees here four days ago.
I'm sure there's already a betting pool on whether or not the university will close down again tomorrow -- many school districts out here closed down for tomorrow before noon today. Apparently it's not supposed to stop snowing in most areas until much later this evening, though it's not doing anything here right now (it was earlier, for a bit). Here's the latest NWS update:
A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM CST THIS EVENING.
* TIMING... PERIODS OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW WILL CONTINUE TO SPREAD NORTHEAST ACROSS THE REGION TODAY... MIXING WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN OVER FAR SOUTHERN AND SOUTHEAST KANSAS.
* SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATION... WILL RANGE FROM 2 TO 6 INCHES IN SOUTHEAST KANSAS... TO 9 TO 14 INCHES OVER SOUTH-CENTRAL KANSAS... TO 14 TO 18 INCHES ACROSS CENTRAL KANSAS.
* ICE ACCUMULATIONS... EXCEEDING ONE-QUARTER INCH WILL BE POSSIBLE GENERALLY SOUTH OF A LINE EXTENDING FROM WINFIELD TO MOLINE... TO CHANUTE.
This is a bit confusing to me, really; I'm not exactly sure what they're saying -- are we supposed to get that much more, or will that be the final total? It's difficult to understand, and they keep updating things every six hours or so. While I'm pretty sure I'm not going to end up with three feet of snow on the ground here in Newton, it's still confusing, and basically means that I don't know how much more is coming between now and when it's all over. The Weather Channel says "expect occasional snow to begin at 4:45 PM," which is a little less than three hours from now.
It's not going to be "all over" for several more days, actually; the temperature tomorrow night is supposed to drop into the single digits, and it's not going to get above the freezing point for a high until the weekend...before we get another system bringing more rain and snow on Monday. They're not giving predictions for that one yet -- too busy taking care of the headaches that this storm caused/is causing, I'm sure. All of this moves into my parents' area back home over the course of the next 24 hours as well, and right now what hit here last night is currently hitting Daisy up in Omaha. It's bad enough to where I have two Amazon shipments (one's my sport coat, and I have a second one coming as well) that have been delayed, and that almost never happens.
Of course, if the university closes down again tomorrow, it means nothing to us in the English department -- we neither teach nor hold classes on Fridays. Even if we did, it would matter little, as most of us wouldn't be able to dig out anyhow even if the university remains open. I'm not planning on leaving the house until at least Sunday. The only thing I may need between now and the end of the weekend would be more cigarettes, and if I have to I'll strap on the steel-toed Caterpillar boots I have in the closet and walk the mile or so to the gas station for them. Trying to get the Monte Carlo out and about would be a driveway-shoveling, slip-sliding nightmare right now, and not worth the time or energy when I could get some exercise and walk to the gas station much more easily if necessary. For now, though, I don't have to worry about anything -- I'm staying indoors with my warm kitties and am planning to have a huge bowl of hot, vegan dumpling soup for dinner.
My mother checked in with me earlier to make sure I was still okay, and commented that the snow pictures (I sent them to her) made it look like I was still living in West Virginia. Yep. It's pretty similar to a standard WV snowstorm. People out here just freak out about it a lot more.
I do have stuff to do over the next five days that I'll be at home; I really should do my taxes, I need to pay the rent (once I can wade my way through the snow out to the mailbox), I have to revise my lesson plans to reflect the snow day today, and I need to work on my comps and thesis stuff as much as possible -- in addition to the normal household chores. I'll also have to keep my eye on the weather as the weekend ends -- it'll suck even harder for my students if we do get another storm on Monday and I'm unable to come in on Tuesday morning, but it'll keep them from being on a lopsided schedule for the next week or so. And, eventually, I would imagine I'll have to at least attempt to shovel or clean off the driveway somehow if I want to leave the house at all within the next week. I don't have a high-riding SUV like my parents or some friends do.
On that note, I'm going to get something to eat and get a shower -- I'm sincerely enjoying having a fair amount of downtime, for once.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
COME AT ME, SNOW: Part I
Spring semester: day twenty-two
As of this afternoon, this is the latest report:
Ah, so my town of Newton finally gets a mention by name in the warning reports.
It is currently 3:58 PM. For the moment, it has stopped snowing -- it slowed down to flurries a little more than an hour ago, and then finally tapered off completely.
This is, as they're calling it, the "first wave," the outer edges of a storm that's going to completely smack the area tonight and tomorrow, as you can see in the warning above.
I got up around 11AM, and there was already a little over two inches on the ground, with it coming down fast. By 1PM, there were four, with the winds roaring and creating near white-out conditions. People are getting into accidents all over the place, as evidenced by the constant stream of ambulance sirens I heard earlier this afternoon. The roads, houses, and other structures are covered the thickest, with the grass slowly picking up more accumulation with each squall. This is a photo taken out my front window at 2PM:
Not too bad yet, no, but the most snow I've seen here at the house (already) in the past year or so. It's hard to see in the photo, but it was stil snowing when I took said picture. Note how my neighbors across the street have already shoveled their driveway out. Hah. Hahahah. Hah.
By the time I was awake enough to check my email, I saw that the university had already canceled all of its evening classes, starting at 4:30 PM. This impressed me; I wasn't expecting this, though I probably should have. If the evening classes are canceled, it's a good bet that the entire university will be closed tomorrow -- especially if Wichita gets that 9 to 13 inches they're predicting. This, of course, doesn't affect me anyhow -- when I saw how hard it was coming down earlier, coupled with the fact that this isn't even the worst part of the storm, it totally solidified my decision to cancel my classes tomorrow. I'm not going out in that, and definitely not going out in it when it's 3x or 4x worse than it is now once the main storm hits tonight. It's a good bet that the university will close. I'd put money on it, actually.
As for me, well, as I mentioned before, the car is in the garage and I have more than enough food and other necessities to wait until all of this shit blows over and melts off.
Here's the email I just sent to my students:
I also tend to have a good rapport with my students, as you can see in my tone with the message above; for example, yesterday, when I told them of my engagement, my second class gave me a standing ovation with applause -- which I was absolutely not expecting at all. It was a bit jarring, actually, though in a good way.
Anyway.
I've mentioned before that people in this state get a little nutty when the weather goes south, and this storm is no exception. The local news channels are running around-the-clock coverage of school closings for tomorrow (read: 90% of everything in this area already) and latest snowfall projections, which haven't been changing that much from before unless they're updating them to say we'll get more than previously thought. For people in Kansas, you'd think a snowstorm was the end of the world. Our state's governor, Sam Brownback, has already declared a state of emergency for all counties in the state -- hours upon hours before the bulk of the storm actually hits us. I don't think this is a bad idea, actually, because it puts all of the road crews and the like on alert, but still.
As much as I actually have a bit of time to watch if I wanted to, I'm avoiding the television for the foreseeable future. I'd rather not be bombarded with hype and fearmongering. Yes, it's going to snow. Yes, schools are probably going to be closed. No, it's not going to be any fun. But eh. That's weather, that's life. It happens. I may be a "weather nerd," but I can get all the information I need online.
As it comes in, of course, I'll keep you all informed of any updates and my own status here (as long as I have power, anyway). Woo! Snow daaaay!
As of this afternoon, this is the latest report:
A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM CST THURSDAY.
* TIMING... PERIODS OF LIGHT SNOW AND EVEN SOME FREEZING DRIZZLE WILL AFFECT THE AREA THIS EVENING... WITH PERIODS OF HEAVY SNOW AND SLEET DEVELOPING LATE TONIGHT AND THURSDAY MORNING. SOME FREEZING RAIN IS POSSIBLE CLOSER TO THE OKLAHOMA BORDER ON THURSDAY MORNING.
* SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATION... TOTALS ARE EXPECTED TO REACH THE 12 TO 18 INCH RANGE ACROSS CENTRAL KANSAS BY THURSDAY EVENING. STORM TOTALS ACROSS SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS WILL VARY GREATLY FROM NORTH TO SOUTH ACROSS THE AREA... RANGING FROM 12 TO 15 INCHES IN THE HUTCHINSON AND NEWTON AREAS... TO 6 TO 8 INCHES NEAR THE OKLAHOMA BORDER. STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL ACROSS GREATER WICHITA IS EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM 9 TO 13 INCHES BY THURSDAY EVENING.
* ICE ACCUMULATIONS... EXCEEDING ONE-QUARTER INCH WILL BE POSSIBLE FOR THE OKLAHOMA BORDER COUNTIES OF SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS... WITH LIGHTER ACCUMULATIONS FURTHER NORTH.
Ah, so my town of Newton finally gets a mention by name in the warning reports.
It is currently 3:58 PM. For the moment, it has stopped snowing -- it slowed down to flurries a little more than an hour ago, and then finally tapered off completely.
This is, as they're calling it, the "first wave," the outer edges of a storm that's going to completely smack the area tonight and tomorrow, as you can see in the warning above.
I got up around 11AM, and there was already a little over two inches on the ground, with it coming down fast. By 1PM, there were four, with the winds roaring and creating near white-out conditions. People are getting into accidents all over the place, as evidenced by the constant stream of ambulance sirens I heard earlier this afternoon. The roads, houses, and other structures are covered the thickest, with the grass slowly picking up more accumulation with each squall. This is a photo taken out my front window at 2PM:
Not too bad yet, no, but the most snow I've seen here at the house (already) in the past year or so. It's hard to see in the photo, but it was stil snowing when I took said picture. Note how my neighbors across the street have already shoveled their driveway out. Hah. Hahahah. Hah.
By the time I was awake enough to check my email, I saw that the university had already canceled all of its evening classes, starting at 4:30 PM. This impressed me; I wasn't expecting this, though I probably should have. If the evening classes are canceled, it's a good bet that the entire university will be closed tomorrow -- especially if Wichita gets that 9 to 13 inches they're predicting. This, of course, doesn't affect me anyhow -- when I saw how hard it was coming down earlier, coupled with the fact that this isn't even the worst part of the storm, it totally solidified my decision to cancel my classes tomorrow. I'm not going out in that, and definitely not going out in it when it's 3x or 4x worse than it is now once the main storm hits tonight. It's a good bet that the university will close. I'd put money on it, actually.
As for me, well, as I mentioned before, the car is in the garage and I have more than enough food and other necessities to wait until all of this shit blows over and melts off.
Here's the email I just sent to my students:
Okay, folks, well, here's the message you've been waiting for (or were expecting with great anticipation) from me: both of my classes tomorrow are cancelled. I already have several inches of grody snow and ice here in Newton, with a storm total of 12-15 inches expected for up here when it's all said and done. Therefore, even if the university remains open tomorrow, I'm not going to risk my life (or, by proxy, any of yours) by coming in, and you all get an extra day off from English 102.My friend Zedral, who was a GTA at WVU when we were both students there, told me that she wasn't allowed to cancel class as a GTA or it would lead to immediate revocation of her assistantship -- they always had to find someone to "cover" for them. This is absolutely stunning to me, especially as the weather in West Virginia is much, much worse in the winter than it is here, and the roads there get much more treacherous much more quickly. When I was an undergrad, I also had GTAs cancel class all the time -- the sociology and anthropology GTAs were notorious for it. Maybe it was just Zedral's department, or something.
So, class, especially those of you in workshop group 1: hang tight. I'll adjust the schedule and timeline for the remainder of this unit, will sort out what we'll do for workshop week over the course of the next few days, and will let you know here what our plan of attack will be as soon as I can get it all plotted out.
I also encourage you to keep checking the main [school] website, as there's a good chance the university will be closed tomorrow. The NWS is calling for 9-13 inches over the next 24 hours or so in Wichita, and as they've already cancelled classes for the rest of this evening, there is a strong possibility the administration will do the same for tomorrow. Be sure to watch your emails for other updates, as well -- I'm sure that I'm not the only professor who will cancel class tomorrow if the university doesn't close.
Hang in there and stay warm, folks!
Mr. [Me]
I also tend to have a good rapport with my students, as you can see in my tone with the message above; for example, yesterday, when I told them of my engagement, my second class gave me a standing ovation with applause -- which I was absolutely not expecting at all. It was a bit jarring, actually, though in a good way.
Anyway.
I've mentioned before that people in this state get a little nutty when the weather goes south, and this storm is no exception. The local news channels are running around-the-clock coverage of school closings for tomorrow (read: 90% of everything in this area already) and latest snowfall projections, which haven't been changing that much from before unless they're updating them to say we'll get more than previously thought. For people in Kansas, you'd think a snowstorm was the end of the world. Our state's governor, Sam Brownback, has already declared a state of emergency for all counties in the state -- hours upon hours before the bulk of the storm actually hits us. I don't think this is a bad idea, actually, because it puts all of the road crews and the like on alert, but still.
As much as I actually have a bit of time to watch if I wanted to, I'm avoiding the television for the foreseeable future. I'd rather not be bombarded with hype and fearmongering. Yes, it's going to snow. Yes, schools are probably going to be closed. No, it's not going to be any fun. But eh. That's weather, that's life. It happens. I may be a "weather nerd," but I can get all the information I need online.
As it comes in, of course, I'll keep you all informed of any updates and my own status here (as long as I have power, anyway). Woo! Snow daaaay!
The Iceman Cometh, Part III: Bracing for Impact
I should learn to stop checking and re-checking the weather, as every time I do, the forecast gets worse:
This. Is not good. This is accurate as of about an hour ago (9:17 PM), when it was last updated.
Let's recap, shall we?
Last night's prediction: 4-9 inches.
This morning's prediction: 6-10 inches.
Tonight's prediction: 8-14 inches.
It keeps going up.
I told my students in no uncertain terms this morning to be checking their emails and Blackboard around 6-8PM tomorrow night, as I would know by that time if I was going to be able to hold my classes on Thursday -- a scenario that, by the hour, looks less and less likely to happen. I also told them that they may want to keep an eye on it anyway, as there is the distinct possibility that the university as a whole may be closed on Thursday -- I've been told by a few higher-ups on campus that whenever any ice is involved with heavy snowfall, as is expected with this storm, as soon as people start slipping/sliding around, they shut the place down if they can.
I have, likewise, heard varying reports on how much snow I myself will get here, as I am right on that "heaviest snowfall" line here in Newton. The Weather Channel's detailed forecast says 1-2 inches tomorrow during the day, and then 5-8 more overnight Wednesday, and 3-5 more on Thursday. That would bring my total expected snowfall here at my house to anywhere between 9 and 15 inches. Which is ridiculous, frankly, as two days ago it was seventy degrees.
There are varying reports about Wichita proper as well; as you can see above, the NWS is calling for 1-6 inches there with more ice, while the Weather Channel is calling for 6-12 inches of actual snow for the Wichita area based on their projection maps. Regardless, nobody in this area is getting out of any of this mess easily. The last time Wichita got a foot of snow, they closed down the university for two days running -- in January 2011, as I mentioned in this morning's post. Even Daisy, in Omaha, won't escape this storm; Omaha is supposed to get, at latest estimates, 8-10 inches themselves on Thursday as the storm moves further north and east. Luckily, Daisy and her mother arrived safely home this morning from her sister's place.
My students, needless to say, are thrilled -- not just at the prospect of me and many other professors who will more than likely be canceling classes, but because the last time most of them witnessed a storm like this, they were in high school. They still have a childlike fascination with nasty winter weather since it happens oh-so-rarely out here. They're also excited at the possibility that the university may close down for a day or two. Most large state universities don't do this, but as Flat State University is primarily a "commuter school" where most of its students live off-campus, that factors heavily into closures and class cancellations. Again, I don't usually cancel classes, but as fifteen inches of snow would be close to the top of the tires of my car, well...
When I returned home from campus this evening I put the car in the garage. I've already pretty much decided that I'm canceling my classes on Thursday, but I have not officially told my students yet -- I'll wait to make said announcement until tomorrow evening, as promised. No reason to be premature on things like that, even if we all know what's coming. Putting the car in the garage also allows me to do a bit of maintenance on it without being out in the cold, anyway -- tonight on the way home, after two months, the "low oil" light kicked on (right on schedule, really). That means in the interim while I'm hunkered down here in the house, I can add oil and check/refill all of the car's important fluids, adding a little Marvel Mystery Oil here and there, topping off the antifreeze, etc. On a car as old as mine, it requires me to do these sorts of things every two or three months anyhow. Preventative maintenance, really -- my Monte Carlo has been running and driving like a champ since I had it worked on last fall, and I intend to keep it that way as long as I can.
The cats seem to know some sort of bad weather is coming -- up until about an hour ago, they haven't wanted to leave my side or let me out of their sight. All three of them have now curled up tightly together on the old couch in the living room, as if they're bracing for impact. My only real worry is that I might lose power for an extended period of time if we get a bunch of ice -- my house is all-electric. That would mean no furnace, no stove, no hot water, computer, or internet. It would also mean very little natural light, and as most of my comps readings I have already are electronic in PDF form, I couldn't even do any of that. I could, well, sleep I suppose. That's about it. Play my DS until the battery dies, something like that. It's not like I could leave the house without great difficulty, so it would be a sort of...mini-vacation.
I could -- as amusing as it may however be -- still make coffee.
Many years ago, an ex purchased a no-electricity-required coffee pot for me on sale from T.J. Maxx. It's all glass, and has its own little glass-slitted filter for coffee grounds. Pour the water through it and it makes coffee, and a tealight candle underneath in a special holder heats it up and keeps it warm. I've never used it; it's sat in the box in the upper cabinet above my microwave since it was purchased, unopened, in case the need for it ever arises. I use tealights in my scented oil warmer, and have an unopened 50-pack of them next to my desk. I think it's safe to say that even without power, I'll still be able to make some hot coffee, and that's a small comfort at least.
If nothing else, I could whip out my notebook and start writing new poems by the dozens. Perhaps one or two of them would be worth salvaging for my thesis project.
Speaking of poems, I did have my first formal one-on-one sit-down meeting with the visiting writer today. She is incredibly intelligent and well-read; I'm highly impressed. Both of the other visiting writers I've had sessions with over the three years I've been in graduate school have been American males -- she's a middle-aged Swedish woman who not only works in translations of, but reads a lot of international poets. I showed her three of my poems -- one each from each year I've been in grad school, actually, though that was purely unintentional -- and she liked them all. She seemed to like my newest one the best, which is actually a bit encouraging because (while it may not be true) I'd like to think that I'm refining my craft and making my work a bit more on-target, or at least as "on-target" as my work gets in my own little mind. All of us who have worked and/or lived in the real world outside of academia know that the MFA experience is hollow and self-important, giving all of us a false sense of security that our work is actually meaningful and/or good. Very few of my poems I think are "good." I think some are decent, I think some are passable, and most of them -- even the ones I call finished -- I don't really like at all. Of course, this may be because most of my poems are very personal, and re-reading them again (or revising them long after the fact) brings up old, sometimes unpleasant memories, but it's a rarity that I produce a poem that I'm actually proud of. I've been told many times by many people that I'm a fantastic poet, but I don't believe it at all and probably never will -- I know too many friends and colleagues who are much better than I am. I know it's not a competition, but I know I'm simply ordinary, another face amongst many who tries to write his thoughts on a page. I refuse to be sucked into that false sense of security -- I've been down that path before.
I also silently realized throughout my discussion with the visiting writer this afternoon that, of all people, I've never written a poem about Daisy. Not once. It's not that I haven't been writing since we've been together (I have, though I've been writing considerably less as of late), but I've just never written one about her. I'm not sure why. I've quoted or made reference to her briefly in a poem or two, but I've not yet written a poem about her, or for her. That thought was troubling to me. I'm going to marry this woman -- have given her a ring, proposed, and everything -- and yet I've never done this. Yes, we met each other at a very strange time in both of our lives, and the first...well, half of our relationship (i.e., this past summer) was really strange, rocky, and on-again-off-again because of that, but to have not written a poem about her or for her is a serious lapse in my attentiveness and creative spirit as a writer in general, not just a poet.
I've had a lapse in my writing overall, really -- I haven't been inspired to write anything new in a long time. With the pressure of my looming comprehensive exams and upcoming graduation/job search, not to mention the first two weeks or so of this semester when I was worried and stressed about my financial issues, everything about life has just steamrolled me. I may have more downtime than I've ever had before as a graduate student, but even with that downtime there's always something that fills it -- whether that be taking care of my students' work, running errands, doing household stuff, or desperately trying to get some real sleep for once. My energy comes in ebbs and flows, and for the past two months or so it's been seriously drained from me by the end of any given week. I don't know why. Maybe I really am getting too old for this "academia" shit. Maybe I'm just getting too old in general, and my creative juices have dried up. Maybe there's a vampire sucking my life force from me while I sleep. Whatever the reason, I feel totally different about my writing now than I did when I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first year MFA candidate. I'm more cynical and slightly more jaded and secretive about it. I'm also more realistic about how little it means outside of the academic environment. I've come to love the act of writing less, the act of reading less. In fact, graduate school has completely murdered my once quite strong love of reading for pleasure. The only writing or reading I actually enjoy anymore is, well, here. In this blog. And I think that's simply out of habit more than anything else.
Anyway, I've gotten way off track.
She (the visiting writer) likes my stuff, which is a compliment to be sure, but I'm not sure she'd actually tell any of us if she honestly outright hated our works. I really want to tell her during next week's meeting something along the lines of "Look, it's okay if you hate this. Seriously, you can tell me. I won't take offense." I've said the same thing to my thesis director in the past, who (as you may recall) has outright told me before that most of my work really does nothing for him on a poetic level. I'm fine with that. That's honesty, and there are few things I respect more than complete honesty in a person. I don't want to be bullshitted; while I may simply be going through the motions at this point, I'm going through them for a reason: I would like to better my work as much as possible. Still, my meeting with her today went really well, and she gave me a long list of books, authors, and other poets to check out when I get the chance, as she thinks I'll really enjoy them (and I'm sure she's correct in that assessment).
In other news, a few more interesting things happened today. Daisy got her ring resized to make it a bit bigger (while it fit her, it was a bit snug/tight), and the jeweller ended up cracking it. As in, cracking the metal at the base of the ring.
"It's okay, babe," I told her. "I can get you another one if they rui--"
"NO," she told me firmly. "This is my ring, it's important, you proposed to me with it in your kitchen and it is my precious."
She even went as far to tell the jewellers that they couldn't keep it overnight because she would get, and I quote, "separation anxiety." Yep. I find this both incredibly super-endearing and hilarious.
Apparently, after doing some research, it's possible to crack a ring if it's heated too quickly/too slowly/something like that while it's being resized. Hopefully it can be fixed easily; she's taking it back tomorrow to see what they can do, as the snow isn't supposed to hit Omaha until at least tomorrow night, if not on Thursday. I have assured her still that if I need to replace the ring, I will more than happily do so, and that she shouldn't worry too much about it. I'll do whatever she'd like me to do, if necessary.
I also decided that I needed a bit of a change of fashion today, and ordered myself my first true sport coat from Amazon. I'm a thirty-year-old, engaged man now -- I can't wear Firefly or Justice League t-shirts to teach in every day, you know?
Note: I walked into my classes this morning wearing my leather biker jacket, aviator glasses, and a Justice League t-shirt. I asked my students if any of their other professors came to class in that sort of attire. When they responded that no, they didn't, I said "I thought not!" and continued with my lecture.
Again, I digress.
I've been wanting a sport coat for a long time. Technically, I have one already -- it's just a bit too small, and I rarely wear it. I can't button it around me, is what I'm saying, because I have really broad shoulders and an even broader swath of fat across my midsection.
Yeah, baby, picture that sexy image for a moment -- fat-rolls a-flutter.
Ahem. Anyway.
It's difficult to find a sport coat in my size that's not only multipurpose, but not $300. I wanted one in black or charcoal, because both colors would go with basically anything in my wardrobe, and I wanted a longer one -- mid-thigh or so. Those things are really hard to come by, honestly, in a decent price range. I found one this morning on Amazon in 2XL (which, I can only hope, will be big enough) in black with muted pinstriping, for $37. Screw it, I thought. If I don't like it or it doesn't fit right on me, I'll give it away. I can return it for free, but the returns process for Amazon can at times be a nightmare -- there's no reason to bother with it for something like a jacket. If nothing else, I'll give it to someone in the department who could wear it, like my boss or a colleague. It arrives on Thursday, barring any unforeseen hold-ups due to the snowstorm barrelling down upon us, and hopefully it'll look nice and fit well. Again, it's so rare that I actually purchase new, useful items of clothing for myself -- I'll get a t-shirt here and there, or some slippers or pajama pants, but I so very rarely buy actual clothing that's useful. Maybe this will be the slow start of a new trend.
On that note, folks, I'm going to bed. It's late, and I'm going to take one last longing look at the green grass outside in the yard before I won't be able to see it again for many days, as the ice/snow will more than likely start long before I awaken from my slumber.
Fare thee well, my friends, and for those of you who are local and will be out and about in the mess tomorrow -- stay safe. Be smart. Don't let some asshole run you off the road.
A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM WEDNESDAY TO 6 PM CST THURSDAY.
* TIMING... THE WINTRY PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP WEDNESDAY MORNING AND CONTINUE THROUGH THURSDAY. THE HEAVIEST PRECIPITATION WILL LIKELY OCCUR WEDNESDAY NIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING.
* SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATIONS... FROM WEDNESDAY MORNING THROUGH THURSDAY WILL RANGE FROM 8 TO 14 INCHES OVER CENTRAL KANSAS... WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE GENERALLY NORTH OF INTERSTATE 70. AMOUNTS OVER SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS WILL RANGE FROM 1 TO 6 INCHES... WITH THE LESSER AMOUNTS NEAR THE OKLAHOMA BORDER.
* ICE ACCUMULATIONS... EXCEEDING ONE-QUARTER INCH WILL BE POSSIBLE GENERALLY ALONG AND SOUTH OF THE HIGHWAY 54 CORRIDOR.
This. Is not good. This is accurate as of about an hour ago (9:17 PM), when it was last updated.
Let's recap, shall we?
Last night's prediction: 4-9 inches.
This morning's prediction: 6-10 inches.
Tonight's prediction: 8-14 inches.
It keeps going up.
I told my students in no uncertain terms this morning to be checking their emails and Blackboard around 6-8PM tomorrow night, as I would know by that time if I was going to be able to hold my classes on Thursday -- a scenario that, by the hour, looks less and less likely to happen. I also told them that they may want to keep an eye on it anyway, as there is the distinct possibility that the university as a whole may be closed on Thursday -- I've been told by a few higher-ups on campus that whenever any ice is involved with heavy snowfall, as is expected with this storm, as soon as people start slipping/sliding around, they shut the place down if they can.
I have, likewise, heard varying reports on how much snow I myself will get here, as I am right on that "heaviest snowfall" line here in Newton. The Weather Channel's detailed forecast says 1-2 inches tomorrow during the day, and then 5-8 more overnight Wednesday, and 3-5 more on Thursday. That would bring my total expected snowfall here at my house to anywhere between 9 and 15 inches. Which is ridiculous, frankly, as two days ago it was seventy degrees.
There are varying reports about Wichita proper as well; as you can see above, the NWS is calling for 1-6 inches there with more ice, while the Weather Channel is calling for 6-12 inches of actual snow for the Wichita area based on their projection maps. Regardless, nobody in this area is getting out of any of this mess easily. The last time Wichita got a foot of snow, they closed down the university for two days running -- in January 2011, as I mentioned in this morning's post. Even Daisy, in Omaha, won't escape this storm; Omaha is supposed to get, at latest estimates, 8-10 inches themselves on Thursday as the storm moves further north and east. Luckily, Daisy and her mother arrived safely home this morning from her sister's place.
My students, needless to say, are thrilled -- not just at the prospect of me and many other professors who will more than likely be canceling classes, but because the last time most of them witnessed a storm like this, they were in high school. They still have a childlike fascination with nasty winter weather since it happens oh-so-rarely out here. They're also excited at the possibility that the university may close down for a day or two. Most large state universities don't do this, but as Flat State University is primarily a "commuter school" where most of its students live off-campus, that factors heavily into closures and class cancellations. Again, I don't usually cancel classes, but as fifteen inches of snow would be close to the top of the tires of my car, well...
When I returned home from campus this evening I put the car in the garage. I've already pretty much decided that I'm canceling my classes on Thursday, but I have not officially told my students yet -- I'll wait to make said announcement until tomorrow evening, as promised. No reason to be premature on things like that, even if we all know what's coming. Putting the car in the garage also allows me to do a bit of maintenance on it without being out in the cold, anyway -- tonight on the way home, after two months, the "low oil" light kicked on (right on schedule, really). That means in the interim while I'm hunkered down here in the house, I can add oil and check/refill all of the car's important fluids, adding a little Marvel Mystery Oil here and there, topping off the antifreeze, etc. On a car as old as mine, it requires me to do these sorts of things every two or three months anyhow. Preventative maintenance, really -- my Monte Carlo has been running and driving like a champ since I had it worked on last fall, and I intend to keep it that way as long as I can.
The cats seem to know some sort of bad weather is coming -- up until about an hour ago, they haven't wanted to leave my side or let me out of their sight. All three of them have now curled up tightly together on the old couch in the living room, as if they're bracing for impact. My only real worry is that I might lose power for an extended period of time if we get a bunch of ice -- my house is all-electric. That would mean no furnace, no stove, no hot water, computer, or internet. It would also mean very little natural light, and as most of my comps readings I have already are electronic in PDF form, I couldn't even do any of that. I could, well, sleep I suppose. That's about it. Play my DS until the battery dies, something like that. It's not like I could leave the house without great difficulty, so it would be a sort of...mini-vacation.
I could -- as amusing as it may however be -- still make coffee.
Many years ago, an ex purchased a no-electricity-required coffee pot for me on sale from T.J. Maxx. It's all glass, and has its own little glass-slitted filter for coffee grounds. Pour the water through it and it makes coffee, and a tealight candle underneath in a special holder heats it up and keeps it warm. I've never used it; it's sat in the box in the upper cabinet above my microwave since it was purchased, unopened, in case the need for it ever arises. I use tealights in my scented oil warmer, and have an unopened 50-pack of them next to my desk. I think it's safe to say that even without power, I'll still be able to make some hot coffee, and that's a small comfort at least.
If nothing else, I could whip out my notebook and start writing new poems by the dozens. Perhaps one or two of them would be worth salvaging for my thesis project.
Speaking of poems, I did have my first formal one-on-one sit-down meeting with the visiting writer today. She is incredibly intelligent and well-read; I'm highly impressed. Both of the other visiting writers I've had sessions with over the three years I've been in graduate school have been American males -- she's a middle-aged Swedish woman who not only works in translations of, but reads a lot of international poets. I showed her three of my poems -- one each from each year I've been in grad school, actually, though that was purely unintentional -- and she liked them all. She seemed to like my newest one the best, which is actually a bit encouraging because (while it may not be true) I'd like to think that I'm refining my craft and making my work a bit more on-target, or at least as "on-target" as my work gets in my own little mind. All of us who have worked and/or lived in the real world outside of academia know that the MFA experience is hollow and self-important, giving all of us a false sense of security that our work is actually meaningful and/or good. Very few of my poems I think are "good." I think some are decent, I think some are passable, and most of them -- even the ones I call finished -- I don't really like at all. Of course, this may be because most of my poems are very personal, and re-reading them again (or revising them long after the fact) brings up old, sometimes unpleasant memories, but it's a rarity that I produce a poem that I'm actually proud of. I've been told many times by many people that I'm a fantastic poet, but I don't believe it at all and probably never will -- I know too many friends and colleagues who are much better than I am. I know it's not a competition, but I know I'm simply ordinary, another face amongst many who tries to write his thoughts on a page. I refuse to be sucked into that false sense of security -- I've been down that path before.
I also silently realized throughout my discussion with the visiting writer this afternoon that, of all people, I've never written a poem about Daisy. Not once. It's not that I haven't been writing since we've been together (I have, though I've been writing considerably less as of late), but I've just never written one about her. I'm not sure why. I've quoted or made reference to her briefly in a poem or two, but I've not yet written a poem about her, or for her. That thought was troubling to me. I'm going to marry this woman -- have given her a ring, proposed, and everything -- and yet I've never done this. Yes, we met each other at a very strange time in both of our lives, and the first...well, half of our relationship (i.e., this past summer) was really strange, rocky, and on-again-off-again because of that, but to have not written a poem about her or for her is a serious lapse in my attentiveness and creative spirit as a writer in general, not just a poet.
I've had a lapse in my writing overall, really -- I haven't been inspired to write anything new in a long time. With the pressure of my looming comprehensive exams and upcoming graduation/job search, not to mention the first two weeks or so of this semester when I was worried and stressed about my financial issues, everything about life has just steamrolled me. I may have more downtime than I've ever had before as a graduate student, but even with that downtime there's always something that fills it -- whether that be taking care of my students' work, running errands, doing household stuff, or desperately trying to get some real sleep for once. My energy comes in ebbs and flows, and for the past two months or so it's been seriously drained from me by the end of any given week. I don't know why. Maybe I really am getting too old for this "academia" shit. Maybe I'm just getting too old in general, and my creative juices have dried up. Maybe there's a vampire sucking my life force from me while I sleep. Whatever the reason, I feel totally different about my writing now than I did when I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first year MFA candidate. I'm more cynical and slightly more jaded and secretive about it. I'm also more realistic about how little it means outside of the academic environment. I've come to love the act of writing less, the act of reading less. In fact, graduate school has completely murdered my once quite strong love of reading for pleasure. The only writing or reading I actually enjoy anymore is, well, here. In this blog. And I think that's simply out of habit more than anything else.
Anyway, I've gotten way off track.
She (the visiting writer) likes my stuff, which is a compliment to be sure, but I'm not sure she'd actually tell any of us if she honestly outright hated our works. I really want to tell her during next week's meeting something along the lines of "Look, it's okay if you hate this. Seriously, you can tell me. I won't take offense." I've said the same thing to my thesis director in the past, who (as you may recall) has outright told me before that most of my work really does nothing for him on a poetic level. I'm fine with that. That's honesty, and there are few things I respect more than complete honesty in a person. I don't want to be bullshitted; while I may simply be going through the motions at this point, I'm going through them for a reason: I would like to better my work as much as possible. Still, my meeting with her today went really well, and she gave me a long list of books, authors, and other poets to check out when I get the chance, as she thinks I'll really enjoy them (and I'm sure she's correct in that assessment).
In other news, a few more interesting things happened today. Daisy got her ring resized to make it a bit bigger (while it fit her, it was a bit snug/tight), and the jeweller ended up cracking it. As in, cracking the metal at the base of the ring.
"It's okay, babe," I told her. "I can get you another one if they rui--"
"NO," she told me firmly. "This is my ring, it's important, you proposed to me with it in your kitchen and it is my precious."
She even went as far to tell the jewellers that they couldn't keep it overnight because she would get, and I quote, "separation anxiety." Yep. I find this both incredibly super-endearing and hilarious.
Apparently, after doing some research, it's possible to crack a ring if it's heated too quickly/too slowly/something like that while it's being resized. Hopefully it can be fixed easily; she's taking it back tomorrow to see what they can do, as the snow isn't supposed to hit Omaha until at least tomorrow night, if not on Thursday. I have assured her still that if I need to replace the ring, I will more than happily do so, and that she shouldn't worry too much about it. I'll do whatever she'd like me to do, if necessary.
I also decided that I needed a bit of a change of fashion today, and ordered myself my first true sport coat from Amazon. I'm a thirty-year-old, engaged man now -- I can't wear Firefly or Justice League t-shirts to teach in every day, you know?
Note: I walked into my classes this morning wearing my leather biker jacket, aviator glasses, and a Justice League t-shirt. I asked my students if any of their other professors came to class in that sort of attire. When they responded that no, they didn't, I said "I thought not!" and continued with my lecture.
Again, I digress.
I've been wanting a sport coat for a long time. Technically, I have one already -- it's just a bit too small, and I rarely wear it. I can't button it around me, is what I'm saying, because I have really broad shoulders and an even broader swath of fat across my midsection.
Yeah, baby, picture that sexy image for a moment -- fat-rolls a-flutter.
Ahem. Anyway.
It's difficult to find a sport coat in my size that's not only multipurpose, but not $300. I wanted one in black or charcoal, because both colors would go with basically anything in my wardrobe, and I wanted a longer one -- mid-thigh or so. Those things are really hard to come by, honestly, in a decent price range. I found one this morning on Amazon in 2XL (which, I can only hope, will be big enough) in black with muted pinstriping, for $37. Screw it, I thought. If I don't like it or it doesn't fit right on me, I'll give it away. I can return it for free, but the returns process for Amazon can at times be a nightmare -- there's no reason to bother with it for something like a jacket. If nothing else, I'll give it to someone in the department who could wear it, like my boss or a colleague. It arrives on Thursday, barring any unforeseen hold-ups due to the snowstorm barrelling down upon us, and hopefully it'll look nice and fit well. Again, it's so rare that I actually purchase new, useful items of clothing for myself -- I'll get a t-shirt here and there, or some slippers or pajama pants, but I so very rarely buy actual clothing that's useful. Maybe this will be the slow start of a new trend.
On that note, folks, I'm going to bed. It's late, and I'm going to take one last longing look at the green grass outside in the yard before I won't be able to see it again for many days, as the ice/snow will more than likely start long before I awaken from my slumber.
Fare thee well, my friends, and for those of you who are local and will be out and about in the mess tomorrow -- stay safe. Be smart. Don't let some asshole run you off the road.
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