I can’t believe it’s only Thursday.
Yesterday, I was on back on campus again, at the second of three schools for the semester. The weather was quite cold, but all of my meetings went well and it was a good day.
Then sometime in the middle of the night it started to snow.
Actually, before that, the third school I was planning to visit today preemptively cancelled all its morning classes and office hours, and it was already looking fairly likely that the afternoon classes and hours would follow suit. Most of my scheduled appointments were in the afternoon, but still, I didn’t much like my chances. The school’s an hour away, on what promised to be icy roads, and I went to bed last night pretty secure that come morning I’d have to e-mail all my appointments to cancel.
You know, for the second time. Oh yeah, this was the school I was originally planning to visit a couple of weeks ago when I got sick.
For a while after I woke up, it still seemed really uncertain what was going to happen. I knew I probably wasn’t driving out to the campus, but did that mean I’d have to go into the office? The trains were running, or at least the network news and MTA claimed they were, but it seemed like things were just getting worse. The snow really started coming down — I joked a little later on Twitter that the flakes were as big as birds. At least I think it was a joke — and even if it turned to rain, any commute seemed like a wet and sloppy mess waiting to happen.
So I decided to text my boss about working from home. And maybe five minutes after that, I got an e-mail saying that the office had closed because of the weather. So the whole thing was kind of moot.
I managed to re-schedule all of my appointments save one, which will just need to be moved from morning to afternoon, and I’m going to try again in another two weeks. Of course, after sickness and a foot more of snow, the universe may be trying to tell me something. (Then again, I thought that last year when I contacted over a hundred faculty at one school and got no appointments. And that place turned out to be my very successful Tuesday.) Hopefully the third time will be the charm, and the school (or I) won’t catch fire or something.
I didn’t do a whole lot today. More shoveling and snow-blowing than was probably wise, especially since there’s more snow predicted on the way. Actually, there’s a chance of snow and rain from now until well into next week, so I don’t think we’ve escaped this just yet. I read a little, did a little work — I mean, I did have my laptop up and running already — and that’s about it. I have no idea if tomorrow’s snow will be enough to close the office again, or even just to keep me home. It’s been a long enough week, and I’m tired enough, that it seems strangely unfair that today wasn’t Friday.
Basically, I’ll do what I did today: figure it out in the morning, I guess.
