Posted on January 28, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 50 Comments
That is, if you’re ten. I still have to work. Stupid adult responsibilities. Mind you, at the moment I’m working in a bathrobe. But you get my point.
And it’s still snowing. Wheee!
Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, editor – AMS
About the site
What's the Big Idea? Authors explaining the the big ideas behind their latest works, in their own words. See the latest Big Ideas!
Authors/Editors/Publicists: for information on how to participate, click here.
Cody! Yay! Big Cody fan, here. *plucks tufts of loose akita fur and flings them with joyous abandon&
Snow Day: the school child’s phrase for winning the lottery.
Your taking pictures in the snow wearing only your robe?
We have this magical technology that allows me to view the outside world without actually having to be in it, Stephen. It’s called a “window.” I think it’ll be a big hit in the coming years.
Windows schmidows.
Or at least that explains the look Kodi is giving you.
Poor Kodi! She looks so forlorn standing in all that snow. A dog’s work is never done.
Member,
Kodi Appreciation Society
John @#4: Yeah, I can’t wait for it to come out of beta. Vista really bites.
Yeah, I’m working from home today via VPN. Modern technology, it allows you to be at work, and still shovel out the driveway before the snow piles up too high.
Has it stopped snowing in OH yet? It started here in eastern MA a couple hours ago.
In Tennessee, kids get a snow day even when there isn’t any snow. A rumour of snow is enough to shut down every school in sight. Meanwhile, I’ve got a book to finished today, so I’m grumpy writer dad, home with the kids.
John – I note that despite the bleak, wintry landscape, at least you have a reliable connection to teh intartubes. Clearly, you live in a bastion of wondrous technology.
@Bob Smietana – indeed, our county southeast of Nashville closed today with 36 degree weather and rain, on the mere THREAT that something approximating snow might fall later during the day.
Kodi! At she’s equipped for such weather.
@John Chu: I dunno about where Scalzi is, but it’s still coming down quite heavily in Cleveland =)
We didn’t have a snow day though… I have to walk to class in six unshoveled inches of snow!
It’s here now. Thanks for the warning yesterday.
BigHugeCo left me a voicemail that said, “Come in around noon.”
Fox19 showed a weather radar and a hyperactive weatherman who collectively responded “You got to be frakkin’ kidding me!”
it’s called PTO, and I’m not afraid to use it!
That is, if you’re ten. I still have to work. Stupid adult responsibilities. Mind you, at the moment I’m working in a bathrobe. But you get my point.
Ditto.
Well, reading Whatever. Work comes next. Can you do that for me, too, now that you’ve written my status update for me?
Some of us had to drive to work in this stuff. Granted, here in Chicago we only got 3 inches and my drive is short, but still, no bathrobe for me.
As I typed my comment, BigHugeCo called.
They said, “Never mind.”
Meanwhile, Fox19’s news director is in his office while the news team is slowly unraveling from exhaustion on live television. What’s he doing in his office?
Having a newsgasm. He hasn’t been this giddy over ratings since Hurricane Ike.
1 inch or so then it turns to rain. School is canceled because they were already having a “minimum session day” to teach the teachers how to fill out the new report cards (give me a break). So we can’t have both a “delayed opening” and a “minimum session day”.
End result: second loss of a paid work day this month. I’ve got to get a new job.
Back when I was recuperating from back surgery, there was one day with a major snowstorm. Elaine went out to shovel so R. could go to her ballet class. As she was finishing the driveway, we got a call that the class had been canceled. I shuffled over to make hot chocolate for Elaine and R and what was supposed to just be a day of recuperating suddenly became a snow day for the entire family as we drank hot chocolate, watched movies, and sat in front of a roaring fire.
I’ve since decided that corporate productivity would be boosted if the first major snowstorm of the year were to be declared a snow day.
Wait. That is not real bad. Had that much here in Utah on Monday. No schools canceled here! Why in the heck do they cancel for that?
I would expect it to have be much worse. Note large cities are wusses w/ snow but Ohio?
Granted I am not a big fan of driving in the snow being a California kid but sheesh.
It hit Toronto around two a.m. and I was happy I’d followed your advice re: the grocery store. It’s still going. Now back to my thesis…
My wife the schoolteacher found out last night that she has today off.
Lucky.
At least you’re getting actual snow. We got two or three inches up to around daylight this morning, then it turned to freezing rain, just warm enough to turn all the snow into deep puddles of malign slush.
Could it possibly be more disgusting outside, I asked myself, as I maneuvered across Broadway to the Flatiron Building, trying to avoid being swallowed by one of the megapuddles. Yes, I suppose it could. If armed bandits were shooting liquid pigshit at us from cannons. That would be more disgusting.
Lefty@#1O:
We’re transplants from Chicago to Nashville (actually Thompsons Station, but I work in Nashville) and still can’t believe that school was canceled because of the rumour that something resembling snow might fall. Two weeks ago, they canceled school because it was too cold.
Too cold for school. Back in Chicago it was -17 and they still had school. No wondered the South lost the war.
O Incorrect Scalzi, there is something significantly wrong with the two images you have posted.
After much analysis the Executive Committee of The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club has determined the problem:
Neither image contains Her Most Glorious Perfect Shimmering Radiance, Mighty Lopsided Cat, nor TempCat Zeus.
To compound the error one of them contains what appears to be Anteater-Thing, or some related defective relation.
This error has had at least two unacceptable results:
1. Excessive trauma among the membership of The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club.
2. Allowing the lunatics of the Anteater-Thing Appreciation Society to escape and roam at large among civilized and sane folk.
You must correct your error immediately. Replace both images with images of Magnificent She. Even though you do not deserve any leeway, one of the images may contain Mighty Lopsided Cat or TempCat Zeus.
Do it now. Now meaning right now.
The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club
Thoughts Within First Three Seconds of Viewing Second Picture:
1) Wow, snow is so pretty when four hundred trucks are not barreling through it first thing in the morning…
2) Oh, Kodi! Poor thing! I must hug this sad, cold animal, even though it will probably cause me to sneeze myself to death.
3) Unless the critter’s actually happy out there. And..why isn’t any of the snow on her coat melted?
4) ACK, VAMPIRE DOG, RUN AWAY —
The first day I worked from home I nearly set my status on the team chat server to “You don’t know if I’m wearing pants!”
But in the end I chickened out and acted professional.
Tom @ #10:
Where you are, it’s a common occurance. In fact, in Cleveland (also in Ohio), this is pretty much daily life from the East Side all the way to the Pennsylvania border.
Further south, happens once, maybe twice a year. It’s easier to shut down. Shut down for a day or two.
Of course, if I lived in Cleveland still, my car would most definitely NOT be a Neon. Might be friendly to my fuel bill, but days like this happy every week or so between Christmas and Groundhog’s Day up there. I’d have sucked it up and bought a Tundra.
Which would not make me popular in a city just holding onto it’s remaining GM plant by its collective fingernails.
You freaks thing Kodi is cold? (My apologies, by the way, for my fancified spelling of Kodi, above.) Do you people know how much hair an akita has? Akitas have so much hair that hospitals use them as emergency hair donors. You can take ten pounds of hair from an akita and he won’t even notice it. Kodi is not cold, he’s hot. He also wants John to close the front of his bath robe.
Also, by the way, for my third comment on this post, might I point out that in Ann Arbor we wear sweats when we work from home, otherwise known as “telecommuter pants.” This conveys your seriousness about exercising later. After you do important work on teh intarwebs. Make sure they are fancy ones with high tech sweat-wicking properties so that you don’t get clammy when you exercise. Later.
Hi, Kodi! (Uh, is Kodi a girl? Somehow I feel I’m not representing well in front of the fans of G.)
@29 I have no clue how much fur an Akita has, as dogs in general tend to render me close to death with their very presence. (Ah-Choo!) (I’m kinda sad about that, actually.) But be mindful — these were my reflexive thoughts and not based in logic anyway. ;-)
Plus, Kodi always looks so sad and pensive and huggable. I was misled! I blame the dog.
Kodi will take your hug. He also wants you to tape bacon to him.
For issues of clarification: Kodi is a she. Also, she likes snow. She was bugging me all morning to let her go out into it.
Sorry girl-Kodi!
My dogs adore snow and cold weather, and they are significantly less hairy than an akita. Alaskan sled dogs are most comfortable at temperatures around -10 to -20 degrees F. I imagine that Kodi is in that same league, although perhaps not burning 10,000 calories a day pulling a sled.
What’s this about the kids feeling they’ve hit the metaphorical lottery when enjoying a snow day? You obviously haven’t seen the teachers!! : )
Re: working in a bathrobe…
Yeah. Working from home does have its compensations (she writes as she’s reading Whatever when she’s supposed to be, oh, working from home), doesn’t it?
On the other hand, I feel like I have to go out somewhere every day when I finish work just so I don’t feel like I’m still at work.
Kodi’s look is very, very clear:
“Why are you not coming outside to play with me in the snow?”
–Brian, Dog-Whisperer.
Bob Smietana@#24 – Here in Murfreesboro it turned to sleep around 8:40, snow around 9:00 and that lasted roughtly an hour. Combined with the overnight “low” of 40-ish, that means . . . wet. And I can hear my kids laughing with glee from 5 miles away at my office. Glee, I tell you. Pure, unmitigated we’ve-got-Wednesday-off-and-get-to-stay-home-and-play-Wii-and-XBox360-glee. That kind of glee. It’s just not fair, especially with the Fallout 3 DLC waiting for me on the hard drive. But they close for zero-ish degree weather in the Boro because the huge population boom of the last 15 years has outstripped the school building plans and we’ve got way too many kids in poorly-insualted portables with heat pump HVAC systems. They just can’t keep up with high temps in the teens or lower.
John – I think you owe us all a picture of you making a snow angel. In your robe. :-)
Ahhh – Memories of growing up in the Western New York/Buffalo snow belt. We frequently got record snowfalls like that!! My brother and I would lie in bed and wait to see if the snowplows went out…if they did, we had school, if they didn’t, SNOW DAY!!!
AS for Kodi, she’s in her element and wanting a playmate. The snow not melting on her back just shows how much natural insulation she has!
AND CHANG – Since the theme of the day is SNOW, do you really want Ghlaghghee out in the snow??? I do believe her royal Ghlaghgheeness would be right highly insulted by that thought, if not horrified should her Ghlaghghee butt actually get ushered out into the elements. Let the snow-lovers have their day, Ghlaghghee will have her’s.
We got the same two inches of snow followed by a quarter inch of ice that is now rapidly decaying into slush that PNH got up in “the city”. Of course, the quarter inch of ice was forecast to hit at about 6 in the morning when the school buses had to start out, so school was canceled. My 14YO is gleeful that midterms got pushed back a day, and my 11YO is just gleeful to be home.
The downside to the high technology that allows me to work from home is that ten years ago they would have closed the building and given everyone an unscheduled “emergency close” day off – but now I’m able to actually, like, work, and thus they kind of expect me to. Ingrates.
It was 74 in central Mississippi yesterday. 42 today but still yesterday was loverly!!!!!
Damn it, I always imagined Scalzi had at least slacks and a shirt on while working. Now every time I pick up one of his books I’m going to imagine him in his bathrobe, typing away with a fiendish grin on his face.
And wearing a Bowler Hat.
Mac @26
Even if she is a vampire dog, she looks more like the sort of vampire who sits around feeling sorry for herself rather than one that bites your head off and uses you as a blood fountain. But as well as an explanation of windows perhaps we need a post introducing the concept of insulation.
@42 I find the idea of an emo vampire dog dangerously adorable.
(But no, I don’t need the concept of being covered in thick fur to me. I’ve read Jack London. ;-D Like I said, these were my reflexive, all-in-three-seconds, not-based-on-logic thoughts.)
Lefty@38,
I think you owe us all a picture of you making a snow angel. In your robe. :-)
With or without the bowler?
Well look at that, it’s a fuzzy in the snow. That made my day.
Member,
Kodi Appreciation Society
I dug out our vehicles this afternoon. Up to an inch of ice on both of them under the 4 inches of snow. Walking is fun. Sink into the snow, find the ice layer, crunch through it to the snow that is actually on the ground, repeat. But having the family home to sit before the fie with mugs of hot chocolate is fun.
Mac @43 – I suspected you did. I looked at that picture and thought – that dog is MADE for snow. But why is she sitting in it, staring back at Scalzi with that disappointed expression? Is he… could he be… not fully dressed? Noooooooooooo!
I know this isn’t Scalzi takes requests week, but I’d like to cancel my request for an insulation post and replace it with a request for a vampire emo dog post. Bacon optional.
Heh, Kodi looks like she’s waiting for you to join her. I can’t blame her, I love snow myself. I have to, considering where I live…
Looks like someone is trying out for a role in Snow Dogs III.
Ah, snow, so pretty. We got snow, followed by rain, which then turned to ice. Now I can skate down the driveway to the mailbox. Trouble is, it’s hard to stop…