I once more live in an arctic tundra. For the moment, anyway.
Last night, right before I went to bed, it began snowing. Really hard snowing. I'm talking big, fluffy flakes whipped by the wind coming down so quickly I could barely see the houses across the street from me. I actually went outside and stood in the driveway next to the car just to watch it, because it was like a scene out of a natural disaster movie.
It stuck, of course; it didn't get out of the 20s yesterday, and being out in the cold for my long day of classes was absolutely frigid. It didn't snow at all during the day; it waited until the night after I got home (thankfully). The snow piled up quickly, covering everything -- including my car, which I left out because the Weather Channel only called for a "dusting" or "flurries." No, we got about an inch and a half, and I will have to brush all of the white fluffy shit off of my car before I go to teach my 210 class tonight. That is, if it doesn't melt first. It's supposed to be 38 today, though right now it's only 19 (and it was 12 when I got up). It's cold. This time last week I was contemplating wearing shorts. Today I'm pondering how many layers I'll have to wear tonight when I leave the house to go teach.
Yesterday's classes were okay, I suppose. I mean, it was a long day. Tuesdays are always really long and ponderous for me, as you know. I tend to just put my head down and slog through them, whether I want to or not -- after all, it is my job. I collected workshop copies from my 102 students, returned papers to my 011 students, and then came home. Well, that's the short version of it, anyway. The long version includes me sitting in my office on main campus for most of the day, freezing because the heat on the top floor of the building isn't that great when said building is surrounded by windows that I'm pretty sure are drafty, and trying to get my nine-year-old laptop to stay online long enough on the terribly shitty wireless there to even download and install updates to the OS (read: impossible). During this time I also graded through papers and edited through workshop copies for tomorrow, drinking most of a pot of coffee to stay awake.
When I was done, I rewarded myself with about an hour of Pokemon X time, as I'd brought my 2DS with me to campus, knowing that I'd probably be bored at some point during the day.
Most of the department -- or at least most of my friends and colleagues, however -- were gone. AWP starts this week (today, actually, if I'm not mistaken). It's the big writers' conference that a ton of us always go to. This year it's in Seattle, and a large chunk of the GTAs and even some of the full-time faculty/professors are gone to it. I've never gone to it, not even when I was a student, because I could never justify just up and leaving my classes for a week and spending $1k or so on a plane ticket and hotel accommodations just to go to a conference to see a bunch of writers I generally had no interest in. It always just seemed like a big waste of time and money to me. And you know me, anyhow -- I don't like to travel if I can avoid it. I'd rather stay at home and sleep in my downtime. I'd rather not have to leave the confines of my bathrobe for three days at a time, or go get drunk in unfamiliar cities. That's just me. What most other people find "fun" or "exciting" just bores me, or I have no interest in it whatsoever.
So, because most of my friends and colleagues (with a few exceptions) were gone to AWP, the department was really quiet. I hung out with a few friends for a bit, but not for that long, as I had the aforementioned work to do in the afternoon. I will say that it took all of my willpower (and sheer laziness) to not cancel my night class and go home. I was so tired and rather grumpy all day, grumpy just because I haaaaate Tuesdays and hate being stuck there so long, especially when it was so incredibly balls-chillingly cold outside with the wind. Every time I went downstairs to smoke, I couldn't feel my fingers for about five or ten minutes after I came back inside. It made me miserable. For someone like me, with my personality, habits, and quirks, it is simply maddening to me not to be able to do my work with an ashtray next to me on whatever desk I'm sitting at, and it drives me nuts that when I'm at the office I just can't light up whenever I want or need to due to those things called "laws" and other issues such as "Brandon really can't afford to be fired from his job." That just adds to the feeling of being trapped there for twelve hours straight on Tuesdays.
Again, I'm not complaining about my teaching schedule -- I like that I don't have to go teach again until tonight, and I like that after I teach tomorrow morning, my weekend starts all over again. I love that I have what is, essentially, a two-and-a-half-day work week spread over three days. Right now it's just the weather, the cold, the no-fun-ness of it all that's really bogging me down. When it's 70-75 every day and in the 60s every morning when I leave the house, when I can wear shorts and comfortable clothing/shoes when I go outside instead of needing to dress in at least three or four layers so that I don't go through my day being unable to stay warm, and when warm spring raindrops replace biting wind and snowstorms every other week, I'll be much happier with my situation.
Speaking of which, there's supposed to be another snowstorm here this weekend. Well, two snowstorms, really. No, that's not a joke.
The first is supposed to be minor -- mostly freezing rain, ice, sleet, etc for my area. That one's supposed to hit tomorrow night into Friday, before it warms up enough on Friday to melt most of it off -- so, really, I'm not concerned with that. I'll put the car in the garage when I get home tomorrow from class, and I won't have to deal with it -- in fact, I'll probably sleep through all of it. 24 hours from now will be 2PM on a Thursday afternoon. If I haven't gone back to bed by that time tomorrow I'll more than likely be on my way to bed shortly thereafter.
The second storm hits Sunday morning (approximately, anyway). They don't know snow totals or have any predictions of any sort yet since it's still several days out, but if they're predicting it at all this far in advance, it's going to do one of two things -- either miss us completely and do nothing, or completely smack us with another huge snowstorm. Out here, there's really no middle ground when they predict something this far in advance.
Again, I really don't care what happens one way or the other, because I don't have anywhere to go or anything pressing to do this weekend anyhow. As mentioned previously, I plan to do my taxes -- as banal a task as someone could ask for. So, let the damn snow hit us again if it has to. Fuck it. Don't care. The only thing that concerns me about the snow is all of my friends flying back home from AWP and the conditions of the roads by 8AM Tuesday morning.
So. Anyway. Switching gears.
This morning, I awoke to an automated email from payroll informing me that my electronic pay stub for Friday was available for viewing. This is not out of the ordinary; every Wednesday before a payday, everyone gets that email. We can login and view our pay stub details electronically because we do not get a paper stub -- it's all direct deposit, obviously. For me, it's the first direct deposit check I've gotten all semester, as payroll has my stuff righted and fixed now. So, curious as to how tightly I would have to budget things between now and Spring Break, I logged in and looked.
...only to find that my paycheck was more than double what I was expecting.
Hm, now that can't be right, I thought.
I looked through the deductions. Everything was there, and everything was correct. In fact, even the recouped amount of the advance check was there and had been taken off correctly. I calculated and recalculated the math, the differences in taxes, the pay split up over this as well as the remaining pay periods of the semester, and...well, it checks out. All of it. And then I remembered what the payroll lady had told me:
What you will be paid for on the 2/28 check is three gross checks in one payment. I have reviewed what your taxes should have been for each of your 9 checks and will index these on your 2/28 check so that you will be paying the correct amount of taxes for what you should have been paid. I will recover the partial advance that I have written for you from the 2/28 check -- so in total you will be receiving just what you should have received if you had received all 3 checks individually.
Basically? I got three checks on this pay stub, minus 1.5 checks (the advance) and minus taxes from all three = the amount I will get paid on Friday. And it's much more than I was expecting.
Again, the math checks out after I went back and read through all of it. It all makes sense. It's set up pretty plainly now that I can see all the figures.
After Friday's check, my pay goes back to normal with every check forward; it may be a little less or a little more for the remainder of the semester, depending on how much taxes are any given singular pay period (since I haven't seen that yet) but I should, roughly, be getting paid what I was last semester. And the bonus here is that I don't have to worry about budgeting incredibly tightly for everything anymore. I still have to budget, yes, but it's not sacrifice X to be able to eat, sacrifice Y to be able to pay the electric bill sort of budgeting anymore. And that's good. Especially since I'll probably get the electric bill today or tomorrow.
So, there's that. I'm now really tired, actually. I thought getting a hot shower would help, as that usually will wake me up more depending on the time of day (hence why I don't take showers before bed most of the time) but it just seemed to weaken me more. I had a sneezing fit earlier, where I sneezed six or seven times, and my nose feels all tickly and itchy, like I inhaled pepper or something. This is usually the sign of a sinus infection, which I already know I have on the other side of my nose (hence why I've been blowing bright, neon-yellow snot out of said nostril for three days now), though not one of the bad sinus infections that end up basically crippling me with pressure and pain. This one's purely allergy-based, I'm guessing, as I was perfectly fine until the weather started flip-flopping again. Daisy advised me to drink water and take allergy meds, which I have done, though again, all of this is going to plague me until Kansas picks a season and keeps it.
Before getting ready to leave for class tonight, I made some food and reviewed my teaching notes and lesson plans, something that seemed to wake me up a little more, but not by a lot. I didn't sleep well last night. I don't know why, really -- I was exhausted by the time I got home, and I made myself a big dinner of Boca burgers and two bags of steamed vegetables. When I got home, Daisy had already gone to bed -- she had canceled her plans to go out last night because she was too tired, so she went to sleep. I was only up until 1 or so myself before I went downstairs, stood outside in the snow for a few minutes to watch it, then went to sleep. I don't know why I didn't sleep well; I didn't sleep in any different positions or sleep any "weirder" than normal; again, I think it was my allergies more than anything else. I slept until only 8:30 AM or so before I woke up and could not sleep any more. As I'll probably get home around 8:30 tonight, this isn't a huge problem -- I could feasibly just get a bite of something to eat and then go to bed. I made curry couscous this afternoon and only ate a little of it, so I could just finish that and pass out if I really wanted to. I mean, I've already showered, and all of my work for my morning class tomorrow is done. If I'm tired, I may just sleep. I may as well -- Daisy said she's going to some aquatic zumba class tonight anyway.
So that's been my day thus far. Time to go teach and then probably come home and sleep.
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