Another Snow Day

The alarm kept its shrill appointment with me at 5:45 A.M. yesterday. I had only a few short hours of sleep as a result of burning some midnight oil and the awakening was not welcome. Moments after I turned off the buzzer, the familiar pings of a text message sounded on my Blackberrry. Who would text me this early? It was from my music teacher friend, Shanan, who wrote: "Snow day today. Go back to bed." No sooner than that happened, the all news radio station I wake up to announced that all New York City Public Schools are closed today. Yes! I texted Shanan back, "Hallelujah!" Went downstairs for a glass of water. Received a text from my daughter that there's no school. And went back to bed. The second snow day this winter.

At eleven I got up, made coffee, and watched the gentle snowflakes fall. Of the many ways to relax, there is probably nothing that matches watching a steady windless snowfall of preferably large flakes. Peaceful.

With coffee in hand, I surrendered my laptop to my daughter and read a favorite book about the English language. A snow day to save my sanity. I had spent the night before putting together a chart of my curriculum for the school year while watching the Winter Olympics. The job would ordinarily have taken a couple of short hours, if I were able to cut and paste certain items from one window to another--but that's not how it turned out. Instead, I had to flip in and out of various windows and, using my short-term memory, remember a phrase or two and re-type the material onto my chart. After about three hours of doing this, I began to wonder which window was which. Which information did I transfer? Did I change something or not? Where was that window? And so on until about 2:30 A.M. when the job got done.

That snow day came as a reprieve.

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