Snow and Meme

I didn't work today but not because of the snow. I didn't go in to work because of a previously scheduled the day off. I still have vacation days to burn and so I'm burned one today. The seasonal nature of our business, the small staff and my areas of responsibilities make taking extended vacation dates problematic. For the past several years it has become the norm to utilize my vacation days by taking the odd Thursday, Friday and / or Monday combo, extending weekends, throughout the year. This arrangement has worked relatively well, so far.



So a day off, an opportunity to sleep in a bit, yes? No. Daughter arrived at my bedside at 4:30 or so to tell about journey to move her car. She'd parked on a snow route and because of the heavy snowfall overnight there was a high risk of being towed. Just as I was drifting back to sleep (after popping a pill for the throbbing headache) Diva dog skittered to the side of the bed needing...somebody and since my door doesn't stay closed (gotta work on that) I was the chosen one.


We settled in and just as we got all comfy, my cell phone jingled. A robo-call from the Valley View School District with an alert that the schools in their district would not open due to the snowstorm. NO, I do not have any children in school and when they were, it wasn't the Valley View School District. My cell phone number got on their list somehow and I've been receiving their recorded messages periodically for about 6 weeks. A few days ago school closed because a student told a teacher he had a gun. I'll make a call and see about getting off the rotation, in the meantime I'll tag the various numbers they've used.


Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, asleep, or rather trying to be asleep. The cats started their campaign to get me up and onto the cat crack dispensing about 6:30 or so. I did my best to ignore them and settled back in and in very short order the phone chimed again. Neta and I chat for a bit and during that chat I decide to get up when we're done as it was clear, sleep was over until bedtime rolls around again.

I get on with the business of the beginning of the day then and after feeding the animals and having a bowl of oatmeal myself I don my layers and head out to deal with the snow that fell overnight at at 8 a.m. was still falling some. After helping D dig out I go about the business of clearing the walk and creating a clear path to the garbage dumpster.

The early forecast had us getting more snow, but it tapered off shortly after I got inside and hasn't booted up again. Well, not yet anyway. The the rest of the day was spent grooming diva dog, shopping for groceries and running other errands. Saturday is the day for walking hiking to mom's to take care of some things over there.

Right about here, you're thinking, "so whassup, where's the meme?" Well, that was the plan when I started, but heh, plans change.