Over-reaction

At least that's what I'd call it.  We lost another two days of school at the beginning of the week to snow.  In that we don't seem to be able to handle a foot of snow as far as plowing and keeping the power on, it wasn't an over-reaction, but it would be nice if they'd figure out that we do get snow now and be prepared for it.  We shouldn't need to have the governor declare a state of emergency and get FEMA involved any time we get more snow than will melt in 24 hours of over freezing temps.

So at least two of the local school systems have cut their two-day February break down to just the federal holiday.  Which makes sense given that we've already gone through eight weather days between Sandy, Nemo/Charlotte, and whatever the last snow storm was.  It will be interesting to see how much later my younger daughter's school system has to go to get in their federally allotted minimum class time for the year.

I've come down with something, and it's supposed to snow again.

In spite of my best efforts, my family has proved that I did a good job teaching them to share.  I am sitting hiding in my office at work quickly going through the box of tissues on my desk.  Thankfully I have a new box out in the car.  If I stick it out much to lunch time, I'm sure I'll have to go out and get it.

And they are threatening us with another one to three inches of snow tonight.  My younger daughter's school may be closed again, since a lot of the streets in that town are only just starting to get plowed out today.

I slept very poorly last night.  My husband went to bed early, which should have told me he wasn't feeling great, since today is one of his days off.  I got up there, read for a few minutes, and as soon as I turned my light off he started snoring.  Even on his side.  Even after I poked him to get him to move.  And when he wasn't snoring, it was because he wasn't breathing.  After a few seconds he would start up again with a noise fit to wake the dead.  And I was neither dead, nor even asleep. I didn't get to sleep myself until well after 1am, woke up twice during the night, and had to get up at 6.

I'm debating heading home; I have around 4 weeks of vacation time.  But I have to schedule knee arthroscopy for later this year, and if it goes like last time, though it shouldn't, I'll be out for at least three weeks.  But the knee has started keeping me up or waking me up at night, and it's started buckling for no particular reason again, and it's about half again the size of the other knee.  The MRI from last week showed lots of arthritis, possible re-tearing of the medial meniscus (the one that was torn last time), definite tearing of the lateral meniscus, and a 2cm cyst under the patella.  I don't think conservative treatment will work very well on this.

And my new computer at work as decided that it has to have an HP pop-up every hour or so asking me if I would like the Software Update to check for updates now.  If it were my computer I'd do it, if only to get the damn thing to shut up.  But as it is, I have absolutely no admin rights on this thing, and MIS seems to think there is no way to tell it to go away.  Grrrr.

And I'm still running an outdated browser, although we are at least up to Windows 7 for the OS (only just replacing XP) and Office '07 from '03.  Not that I'm one to talk about Office.  My new laptop didn't come with Office or even Office starter with the ads.  So I've got Open Office, and for those times when you just need an MS product, I've installed my nice copy of '97.  It does what I need it to, and it's not like I'm sharing files so getting a newer version isn't a high financial priority.

I'm going to go back and continue hunting for obscure articles for my patrons, and hope that my nose survives the afternoon.

We survived!

Not that it was hard.  We did lose power for about five hours on Friday evening, but not enough for the house to cool down below 60.  We had parked the cars one behind the other, rather than side by side, which made clearing out enough drive so my husband could go to work today easy enough.  I tried to finish up the little bit behind my car after his left and discovered that the bottom third was more like a hard frozen slushy than snow, so I only got about half of it done before my asthma decided I had done enough for the morning, so I didn't make it to church.  The husband and girls have finished clearing that bit out as well as our front walk, so if there is mail delivery tomorrow we will get it.  But we do have to find our rubbish bins before Wednesday, since they are where the snow all got pushed (one neighbor has a plowing business, and when he saw my daughter working on the heavy stuff at the end of the drive yesterday, he made a few passes and cleared it off - we have nice neighbors).  But away from the drifts we didn't get more than about a foot.  However there is no school again tomorrow, probably because so many areas still aren't plowed, and I imagine they are worried about the ice that will form tonight after so much stuff has melted, but had no where to go.

I'll get some of my husband's pictures to post later today, but this is from the local dairy queen at the corner down from our house.  My husband took this picture Friday evening around 5pm.

I wonder if that was intentional, since they only opened of Thursday.

"OMG! Is that snow? We're all going to die!"

I wish I could find that picture, supposedly it's a real road sign, not a photoshop, seen in Texas a year or so ago.  But it certainly describes how everyone around here acts when they hear the word "SNOW".

The .gov has upgraded the Winter Storm Watch to a Blizzard Watch, telling us "...A POTENTIAL HISTORIC WINTER STORM AND BLIZZARD IS EXPECTED TO DROP 1 TO 2 FEET OF SNOW ACROSS MUCH OF THE REGION FRIDAY INTO SATURDAY..." Of course, "much of the region" probably means a line starting at least a few miles north of our house.  But it also means that we'll probably be lucky if the kids even have a half day of school tomorrow.  And just as my younger girl is starting to go back to school again after almost 2 months of various illnesses.  I really want her to be able to go regularly, and get back into the habit, and we just don't need this.

I should stop and stock up this evening, just to be sure, though we have plenty of TP at home, and I don't eat bread.  One friend has always wondered why everyone always buys eggs when it looks like we might have power outages.  Either they are planning to hardboil them all in advance, or else they like the idea of having something which they can look at but not eat?  Or else they all like making bread pudding after the whole thing is over.

This is New England.  Until the last few decades we expected to get lots of snow.  We need to get used to it again.

I wonder how short the town's budget for snow removal will be this year.  Every year that I've been involved with the budget process, we've ended up doing a 4th quarter transfer to cover a serious shortfall.  And every year they keep the budget at the same level as the year before.  At some point, they really need to fix this.  Maybe ask for the average of the previous 4 years actual expenses?

I should probably ask my boss for a day off tomorrow.  I'm a librarian, so while my hospital badge will supposedly allow me to drive on the roads, even if they've been closed, I don't think the Staties would really consider me emergency personnel.

Ah, Bureaucracy!

I'm finally getting around to switching from the local cable company for TV, internet, and phone, to NO TV,  Comcast for a higher speed cable internet, and a basic metered land line with ATT.  They finally have a package for under $15 a month with tax for a line, but you pay 3.5 cents a minute for all local calls.  Since we use our land line for maybe 15 minutes of calls a month, this is still less money than we're paying the cable company or would pay ATT for the next level with free local calling.

Everything was going fine until we came to the address for service.
ATT: "Are you at Unit A or Unit B?"
Me: "There are no units, it's a single family dwelling."
ATT: "But our 911 files show two units."
Me: There is only one unit.  There has only ever been one bathroom in this house, so I don't see how it could ever have had a second unit.
ATT: "We have to go by the 911 files."
Me: "?"
ATT: "Maybe there was a second phone line at some point?"
Me: "That would explain the second set of lines coming out of the house on the other side from the ones going to the street, the ones that are no longer hooked up to the street, and which I've been meaning to cut off since they are coiled under the front porch right now."
ATT: "Well, we'll put down no unit number and see what happens, but we may have to call you again."
Me: "OK."  /sigh

This is the third time I've been through this with them in two days.

I should call Mike back and ask if there is an e-mail address I can send a copy of the town tax roll and/or GIS info to to show that there is only one physical unit at that address.