Snow Daze

I don't talk about work much here, and there's a number of reasons for that. Today, though, I'm bending that rule a little bit. I need to vent a bit about snow days. I've always been under the impression that a snow day happened when, you know, there actually was enough inclement weather to cause major problems or dangerous conditions. Now, granted, Charlotte in general and the university in particular are fairly ill equipped to deal with winter conditions (don't get me started on the rain thing...we really do get a lot of that. You'd think you'd work the drainage out...), but that doesn't keep it from being a bit annoying when you lose a whole class meeting worth of instruction time. Frustrating.

Well, we had another one yesterday. Snow day, that is. This one, at least, was pretty legit. Fortunately, my classes don't meet on Mondays, so I just missed work in our writing center (which, of course, pays by the hour). Now, that would have been the end of it, and I did get some grading done, but because there was so much legitimate rain and snowfall the last three days, there was still a lot of moisture around this morning (see aforementioned drainage issue). And, of course, the temperature dropped below freezing overnight.

So...surprise! It's sunny! The roads appear clear! BUT the university is delaying opening until 10am this morning, canceling my first two (of three) class meetings. This, of course, is a problem, since one class was work-shopping a paper that would have been due Thursday. You know, the last meeting before spring break? The class that is meeting? Yeah. We're watching a movie today. And that was already planned, mind you.

Anyway, bitterness aside, I dropped by campus yesterday afternoon to get some work done, and I found that pretty much everywhere, there had been some concerted efforts to make the most of the snow. I took some camera photos of the snowmen around the parking lot of my apartment complex, most of them 2-3 feet tall (one on the hood of a car!). But, the best stuff was near campus.

This one put a smile on my face:This is about 4:45pm. Note the grass.

Of course, there's always another side to this, and this is the example. I had to snap a picture as I drove by, but it is exactly what it looks like:

And there are your "winter" greetings from Charlotte! Hope everyone is having a real pleasant week.